


However We Know the Landscape of Love

by greenasphodel



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Adulthood, Alternate Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Death Fix, F/M, Fairy Tale Elements, Fix-It, Fix-It of Sorts, Girl Saves Boy, Growing Up, Marauders, Marriage, Romance, Temporary Character Death, rampant magic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-24
Updated: 2017-02-22
Packaged: 2017-12-21 05:10:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 56,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/896177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greenasphodel/pseuds/greenasphodel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Larka was what the your mum would call a nice girl, and what your mate would call a sensible sort of bird. So wasn't everybody in for a surprise when she embarked on a fairy tale to save Sirius's soul.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue: Pub Scene

**However We Know the Landscape of Love**

—an unauthorized biographical account

**-.-.-.-**

_Again and again, however we know the landscape of love_  
and the little churchyard there, with its sorrowing names,  
and the frighteningly silent abyss into which the others  
**fall**

**-.-.-.-**

**Prologue: Pub Scene**

Many things have been said about Sirius Altair Black, and very few about Larka Janet Roxburgh. In fact, we couldn’t even say we knew her name—only vaguely, in the way that we said we recognized old schoolmates’ names even if we didn’t; the way names sounded familiar because we felt like they _should_ be familiar. To us, she just sort of appeared one day, arriving at Grimmauld Place and stepping inside with an anxious look on her face. So weren’t we all so surprised that Sirius— _Sirius_ , the bloke that half the birds at school used to pine over, even if by then he was a gaunt shadow of his old self, a sort of electric restlessness buzzing just underneath his skin—Sirius gathered her and fit her against him, a mellow piece to his ragged—ragged _something_ , we weren’t sure what exactly to call it.

Of course, we were very intrigued, but very quickly he died.

 _Then_ came the shocker.

And cor, what a story it was.

(Grab a pint—bit long, this telling, because to start at the beginning was the only way to start anything, wasn’t it?)


	2. In Medias Res

**Chapter 0**

**In Medias Res**

The woman was a figure out of a John William Waterhouse* piece, a lone profile against the impending storm, to be carried away by the next gust of wind—with some romantic liberties taken.

In truth, the woman was perhaps too level-minded to be blown away by any wind, and would have made a terrible painting. Her posture was passable: alone on the side of the street, hair lashing in the wild wind and hand at her chest, feebly clutching a long cable-knit scarf (this was before such scarves rotated into fashion again). Yet Waterhouse would never have painted somebody quite so exceptionally  _ordinary_. She had long hair, a deep brown in a cut that spoke of walk-in neighbourhood saloons. Her eyes were of the same brown, neither large and watery, and although they were rendered brighter by eyeliner, the effect was minimal. Fortunately, her apple cheeks defied gravity and levitated the telling signs of comfortably easing into middle age (the crow's feet, the smile lines circling her thin mouth, the faint neck lines). Her nose did not particularly want character but offered none as well. Even her anxiousness seemed to be the commonplace English anxiety, as she wrung her hands and waited for something to happen. A man passed her without a second glance (or nary a first)—wasn't everybody waiting for something or other? The apocalypse? Their house being bulldozed for a highway bypass? A better television program**?

This woman specifically, though, was waiting for the screech of childish laughter that soon pierced the muggy air. Two children ran after one another, zapping into existence from around the corner like faeries of old (or just nimble children): a little girl, very pretty, with wild hair and large underwater eyes, and a little boy, who was far less pretty, even at the tender age when youth often looked like beauty. The children ran towards the perfectly ordinary woman, who upended her perfectly ordinary frown into a relieved smile at the sight, and said, in a perfectly ordinary Guildfordian *** accent, "Penelope, Pan, do come inside."

The children looked at her with appropriately childish disappointment as they were led through a yard lined with bristly borage flowers to a modest house washed in a soft yellow.

Just as the woman fitted the keys into the door, the little, pretty girl shouted excitedly, "Look, Pan! Look at the black wolfie!"

The woman looked up, startled, and caught the outline of something very large and very black. She stood as if struck by the lightning that just flashed, but soon recovered herself. It was only the next-door Ramseys' black Labrador****, she reminded herself, a swirl of disappointment running at the bottom of her stomach, unsuitable for her sensible age.

"I baked some brownies," she diverted both their and her own attention away from the large black outline. At once, the children discarded the thought of the fantastical wolf, and were drawn inside to domestic promises of sugar and butter. The woman however, trailed behind and tried to breathe at an even pace and not let the hearth fire make her eyes water.

The living room was warm and cosy, full of large furniture that ate up space and made the room appear smaller than it already was. The woman stepped inside and pushed close the front door, until with a distinct 'click', she sealed the house from the rest of the world. She folded herself into an armchair by the window, made of a fabric with lopsided pandas, a bizarre and out of place look in the room full of practical oaken objects. A book***** had been lying limply on the carpeted floor, and the woman picked it up and tried to resume at the exact place where she left off.

Even warm brownies, however, were not enough to sustain children: as she was trying to decipher where in the sea of identical looking rhymes she had left off, a high-pitched voice broke the silence. “Auntie Larka, tell us a story!”

"Say please," the woman—Auntie Larka—replied reflexively, but her hands were already closing the book.

"Please!" Penelope turned her bright eyes on her, pleading.

She could always start  _Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border_  some other time, she supposed; it had been waiting faithfully for a number of years now, and one more day would not make it disappear. It was mostly old ballads involving faerie abductions anyhow, and Merlin knew she got an awful grade on that paper on faeries: a completely unacceptable Acceptable. Spurred by her renewed aversion towards faeries, she agreed, "All right, but promise not to interrupt," eliciting a promise that she knew they would not be able to keep.

"Promise!" the two shouted in unison, tumbling down from the chairs to the floor near her feet, looking up at her expectantly.

"What sort of story do you want to hear?" Larka asked.

"True love!" Penelope cried the same time as Pan screeched, "Adventure!"

"Magic!" Penelope said again, not to be undone by her brother, and Pan in turn said, "Danger!"

"Alright, alright," Larka lifted her hands, "A story of true love, adventure, magic, danger, moonlight rendezvous, duels, small against the powerful, wild wilderness, betrayal, war—"

"We get the idea!" Pan complained, although he could hardly imagine their Auntie Larka containing within her all these exciting things.

"Approximately fourteen years ago, Hogwarts******—" Larka began as one might begin a science lesson.

"What's Hogwarts?" Penelope asked even as her eyes grew even larger, her mind unable to grasp the concept of  _fourteen years_ —or even the concept of a year, really, at the tender age when each day was like a year.

Someday, Larka thought, Penelope would break hearts and eat men like air—although Larka was really past the days of wishing her eyes would shine like that in the corner. "Hogwarts was my school—"

"Your school is that old?"

"Yes, and I was a student there fourteen years ago." Hogwarts, like some things, seemed to not have a beginning or an end. "Now what did say about interruptions?" she added, her tone not at all reprehensive.

Despite her mildness, Penelope still became rather docile (her mother always did wonder how a woman like Larka could calm the natural disaster that was Penelope). The girl squeezed her lips firmly and refrained from saying that she hadn't thought Auntie Larka was so  _old_.

"Let me begin again then," Larka tried again, "Fourteen years ago, there was a girl of but mere fifteen—"

It was Pan that broke her off this time, "That's you, ent it?"

Larka patted his head, strangely eager to recount her story to children too young to take it seriously, "Yes, perceptive man you are," she encouraged although his line was not known to produce perceptive males.

"Ahem," she cleared her throat and let her gaze rest on the mountains and forests and Scottish landscapes that rose out of the sky outside the window.

"It had been a very good year…"

(Thus, the story began.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * Larka Janet Roxburgh had never once in her life fancied herself one of the heroines in a John William Waterhouse painting. In fact, she had no idea who he was, so was in no position to concoct daydreams based on his various oil-on-canvases of mythical and literary female figures. She would have found his colours intimidating anyhow.
> 
> ** Despite the failure of the renewal effort of the Doctor Who series, there were in fact a great many good television programs coming to British channels, including some classic ones. All in all, plenty to satisfy the wait for better telly programs, but alas, people were also waiting for other things that were harder to come by.
> 
> *** Not that Guildford had a distinct accent, beyond the usual middle-class south-eastern English one. Larka J. Roxburgh’s father was greatly influenced by his own father from the Scottish borders (speaker of a true posh Glasgow accent, the late Grandfather Roxburgh would get violent when any comedian portrayed the Violent Glaswegian trope). However, Larka’s mother ensured that Larka was educated to speak only proper moderate Received Pronunciation (they could not afford a heightened RP tutor). Larka ended up speaking a modern melange of RP and Estuary: not quite so guttural, but her ‘l’s were not fully vocalized, and occasionally she dropped the ‘h’ in ‘home’ like mum did. Yet Larka liked having a category to fit under, so despite growing up elsewhere—her family moved to Guildford when she was sixteen and past her linguistic formative years—and ‘Guildfordian’ was as good as any  
> **** The black Labrador (Doug was his name) was quite often mistaken for a large wolf when he howled, with his imposing height and bushy tail. The Ramseys found it both amusing and a rather good security measure against would-be burglars at night, so they actively encouraged this behaviour with bacon-flavoured treats.
> 
> ***** A gift from Remus John Lupin during Larka J. Roxburgh's first year out of school. She had packed it at the bottom of a box and had only recently rediscovered it.
> 
> ****** This did not strictly follow the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy (see ISWS 5311-5330 and Non-Magical Protection Act Chapter X, specifically, 14C-2 filing requirements 20 days before disclosure). In fact, to say that was being very loose with the Act in the first place. But if one was going to cast caution to the winds and tell a wild tale to one's niece and nephew, then one certainly was not going to be following the rules, ISWS or NMPA. It was only fitting, since the tale itself bore this spirit as well, and was shockingly full of rule-breaking and otherwise borderline illegal activities.


	3. The Prince I Dreamt For You

**Part One – The Idle Years**

**Chapter 1**

**The Prince I Dreamt For You**

The Larka of fifteen years old, small and harmless, was habitually more anxious than the average Fifth Year. It had taken her five years to stop feeling like a tourist here in this sprawling, glistening maze of a school. Understandably, it was _Hogwarts_ , only the most prestigious magical school in all of the UK (and if their ranking system was to be believed, number one in the entire world).

Yet given the natural awe for Hogwarts, Larka Janet Roxburgh was still somewhat more anxious than she rightfully ought to have been. Now, no self-respecting psychiatrist would diagnose Larka as suffering from anything particularly _wrong_ (besides, of course, the general neurosis that plagued the everyman, bread and butter to budding psychiatry practices). Larka knew that with certainty, because one of the neighbours from home was such a psychiatrist who frequently gave unsolicited consultations in the middle of potlucks. No, Larka’s problem, as her father sagaciously pointed out, was just that she fretted over odd things: a cat pacing too closely to the ledge; or a letter from home expected but yet to arrive; or a sudden sound in the reserved quietude of the library; or a pencil that was slightly longer than the rest in the bunch; or walking through the Gryffindor common room, as she was currently doing. She never could decide on the right angle at which she should hold her head, or how closely she should hug the bag at her side. True, there was no appraising gaze on her, she knew from reason, but still her spine stiffened involuntarily as she tried to determine the proper gait of each step. It was important to be normal, you know, at eighteen (it was also important at other ages, but at eighteen it was of utmost importance).

Upon reaching the small table in the southeast corner, Larka dropped her overstuffed canvas bag with gushing relief. She was no longer anxious, because she was with her best friend Novia Brooks, and Novia always knew exactly what to do.

Larka secretly thought that Novia Brooks was the prettiest of the all the girls in their year, with the sort of facial proportions taught in beginner sketching lessons. Her individual features were also textbook beauty: deeply blue eyes of the ocean or other conventional metaphors, unmarred ivory skin that defied adolescent hormone wreckage, glowing yellow hair that flipped like a commercial, and a faint dusting of freckles scattered over her masterpiece nose.

“Where did you vanish to after dinner?” Novia asked sharply.

Despite or because of her beauty, Novia was infamously temperamental. Novia did not top the Most Dateable Bachelorette of Gryffindor* because her smile was dazzling but she switched to frowns within milliseconds, her words were often crafted to inflict maximum pain, and she flatly ridiculed all attempts at asking her out on dates. Novia often claimed that for her it was only the best or nothing at all. Novia’s heart was like the moon, Larka thought proudly, unique and not won easily.

But the moon princess was expecting a reply, Larka realized. “Oh the librarian told me the books on my waitlist had returned, so I went to pick them up.”

"Only your books are so weird that they've got to be  _requested_. What is it this time?"

" _The_ _Years_ —it’s like a rather long winded log of a family’s activity, but the language is very pretty, so makes for a rather lovely read. It's by this witch who married a Muggle and killed herself by walking into a river with a sinking charm because she was too depressed with the rural Muggle life," Larka explained, a bit puzzled as to why the witch was unsatisfied with a life that she chose herself.

Novia snorted with character. As she was undoubtedly readying some retort about the morbidity, the painting of the Fat Lady that served as the Common Room door swung open with a dramatic bang. The open gateway revealed a group of Sixth Year boys, who proceeded to stroll in as if they were kings.

Larka supposed that, to some extent, they  _were_  Kings.

Prancing in like a sovereign head was James Potter, heir to the highly respectable if politically vocal Potter lineage and a remarkable whirlwind of a Chaser on the Gryffindor Quidditch team. Larka remembered seeing James in her First Year, a still scrawny young boy with unruly hair fresh on the team, flashing the audience huge grins whenever he had a chance instead of focusing on the Ball, but somehow never missing a pass, doing flying tricks like the broomstick was an extension of his mind*. He had since then grown into a very contemporarily handsome young man, the sort for whom every birthday party began with noise complaints, every pub-crawl ended with smashed glasses, and every bad joke made funny on account of his easy charm.

The moment the trio settled in front of the fireplace, James tipped his mate Sirius Black’s chair back (and yes, _Black_ , as in _those_ Blacks). Since Sirius had previously been balancing his chair at the exact precipice of falling but not falling, he ended up tumbling backwards. Jerking forward with impressively quick reflexes, Sirius stumbled aside, avoiding crashing into the waxed wooden floor. He scowled ferociously at James, his mussed dark hair falling into his grey eyes.

Sirius Altair Black, belligerent Beater of the team, was less of a Quidditch phenomenon than just a phenomenon. He had made legends for himself on his first train ride to Hogwarts, before even being sorted into Gryffindor (which had scandalized his strictly parents)—he still held the record for the largest brawl on the train. Unlike James's gradual development into his good-boy movie-star look, Sirius had always been the preternaturally beautiful child that the pureblood bred for: a perfection of pale skin, deeply set eyes, straight Classical nose, strong chin, distinct Cupid's bow, and high cheekbones. Of course, his morose looks were only a small part of his identity. Sirius was mostly known to be whimsical (impulsive), passionate (melodramatic), and creative (trouble-making).

“You _wanker_!” Sirius growled out at James, who was snickering. Larka sometimes failed to understand this particular brand of friendship, which manifested in being not nice to each other, but then again, she often failed to understand many things that people did.

Presently, Sirius lurched forward, grabbed a sofa cushion, and swung the weapon into the side of James’s head, starting a zealous pillow fight in a manner befitting of primary school. (Pillow fights were rather like fencing, Larka thought as she saw one of the pillows break from James’s too-enthusiastic thump, depending greatly on arm span in amateur attempts.)

The third member of their crowd—Remus Lupin— scooted away from them on the sofa and watched with amused indulgence, a faint smile that accomplished to look both academic and puckish. He neither had the build (wiry instead of muscular) nor the temperament (well-mannered) for such behaviour. In fact, he was a Prefect. He provided the group with the enviable privilege of the Prefects' Bathroom. Oh, Larka hadn't meant to make it sound like he was only there for his benefits, no, it was just that he always seemed more mature. He had a boyish face and a round-tipped aquiline nose that should have made him appear younger than his years, but Remus had the opposite look. Ranging wildly between being lightly tanned to having a sickly complexion, Remus always looked a little odd. Perhaps he had his own calendar system?

Peter Pettigrew, the fourth member of their group, was a quiet, mousy kind of boy—pudgy for his height, which hadn't changed since his Third Year, with a natural, nervous twitching to his smile. Unobtrusive and miserably failing History class, Peter was the perfect piece to complete the four, extremely calming sort of boy, with his double chin and misty blue eyes. Larka always felt like she could talk to him the most out of the group.

Not that, you know, she  _did_  talk to him.

James won the match, pushing an out-of-balance Sirius onto the sofa with a triumphant shout. James jumped onto the sofa, adding to his already tall stature, and bowed towards a band of girls, among which was of course Lily Evans. The humanizing detail in James's life was his current and ever futile pursuit of Lily Evans—well, less 'pursuit' than loud demonstrations of undying love. Larka found his antics at once idiotic, maddening, and yet oddly charming, like most of the things James did.

“You boys done yet?” Remus asked drily.

James grinned, “Oh you know Sirius isn’t happy unless he gets a clobbering at least once a day.

Sirius scoffed as he flopped down to lie on the sofa, but his smile contradicted his expression. His legs were draped over the arm and he was languidly rolling his right shoulder. “I think you mistake fists for feathers.”

A low round of mumbled chuckles went around the room—and Novia was among the mass.

“Novia?" Larka tentatively said, mostly playful and only somewhat apprehensive. "Enjoying the display?"

Novia looked away, looking like she could be blushing, but snapped back at Larka just in time, "No, of course not, Larka you're imagining things again!"

“Shall I look forward to your initiation as the newest member to Black's fan club**?"

Novia blinked rapidly, "There's a fan club?"

Larka wasn't sure, she didn't follow social clubs that much, but that wasn't the point. "If not, you could start one," she suggested reasonably.

“Oh stop it,” Novia sighed, a little soft puff of air that all girls sighed at some point. “He is rather good looking though.”

“So he’s cuts the bill of ‘nothing but the best’?”

Novia looked at Larka as if she was daft. “It’s _Sirius Black_. Of course he counts as one of the ‘best’. You can tell from the way he walks, talks, eats, fights, jokes that he has a sensitive soul residing behind the façade of a rich, violent playboy, hiding a passion and insecurity that tortured his entire childhood, in desperate want of the true love. A handsome, charismatic, morose nobleman: it’s like a character out of one of your books!”

The way Novia describes him, he did sound like a stock Byronic hero. Larka wasn’t sure what particular way a Byronic hero would walk, talk, eat, fight, or joke, but obviously Novia knew a lot about it. Larka hadn’t ever considered such a character to actually exist in reality, but then again, she often felt like Sirius existed on a different plane—or at least the reputed Sirius according to wild gossip. Sirius did not have the best reputation: the most widely accepted version accused (celebrated?) him of taking at least fifteen different Hogwarts girls into various broom cupboards and/or empty classrooms; of losing points for Gryffindor with wild abandon by duelling every other Slytherin; of being unpredictable to the point of being bipolar, as likely to tipping ten Galleons as breaking one’s nose for the same joke; who defied every stereotype of being a Black only to fall into other stereotypes (the melodramatic Fool, the brash Jock, the unrepentant Don Juan).

Larka supposed that he could easily be purposefully mean as he could be a misunderstood sensitive soul, a spoilt boy or a sociopath in the making—or a cross-dressing robot human replica from five hundred years into the future, sent back on an archaeological mission to capture 20th century civilization. Larka had never once talked to Sirius so she did not know.

“You think he’d go for me?” Novia asked wistfully.

Larka raised her eyebrow, "I don't see why not: you've got hair of sunshine and eyes of skies. He probably just has bad eyesight."

Novia snorted again and carried the conversation back towards Larka's books.

Larka, however, spent the rest of the evening taking fugitive glances at Sirius at every opportune moment. He was gesturing wildly at some tall tale that he was telling, eyes burning with an intensity that frightened Larka a little. Words poured out of his mouth like a string of husky pearls, round and rich, brightening the room. Larka couldn’t tell anything about a childhood tortured by passion and insecurity, but she could definitely see his upbringing in the details: his shirt fabric, his set of teeth, his vocabulary, the subliminal way he held himself although he tried to have bad posture—all of it rang clear of a boy born to prominent if severe (unhinged, as baser society gossip called, but Larka put little stock into her Mum’s sources) pureblood parents.

The more she observed him, the more comfortable Larka was with the idea that Novia could be right and Sirius could be subconsciously drawn to Novia. Why, just look at the way his grey eyes flickered towards their general direction just as Novia’s slender fingers brushed her hair. There was fondness hidden in his left dimple in that smile that surveyed the whole room. The way his eyebrows arched and loosely flurried at the end made him look a little wide-eyed. The brushed back waves were like a flock of dark magpies trying to fly towards Novia.

Larka looked down at the pile of books that she had gathered. How did the stories go? So she tried to remember how to approach a Byronic hero, but couldn’t decide on which book was the most apt. (Byron’s _Childe Harold's Pilgrimage_? _Wuthering Heights_? _The Portrait of a Lady_?)

Perhaps she ought to pen a love letter from Novia (who of course would be too proud to do so herself)? Or perhaps make a cake in the likeness of Novia and send it to the boys’ room (boys like cake too, right)? Or perhaps falsely kidnap Sirius and then have Novia rush to the rescue (typically the male did the rescuing, but Larka thought that a subverted trope had its charms)? Or perhaps just march up to him and say something along the lines of him not being able to find a better girlfriend than Novia? Whichever would these plans solve the romantic tension?

The bleak Scottish night found Larka turning about on her bed, sitting and crouching and generally fretting about. Even if she decided on a course of action, it was still impossible to carry out: which day, which hour to implement? Where, and how should she make Sirius do his part? How to do it privately and not arouse suspicion from his friends, who were as much a part of Sirius as his eyebrows? All her plans led to questions instead of answers, and the longer she thought, the more aware of her discomfort she became. Her back ached, her neck was strained, and her eyes became watery. Well, she supposed that she could figure it out tomorrow.

The 'tomorrow' conveniently turned into a 'day after tomorrow', and again into 'next week'. Soon enough Larka stopped giving herself excuses, and simply let the inertia settle in, guilty and easy.

-.-.-.-

Daylight pierced Larka’s closed eyelids so abruptly that she struggled to sit up, mind foggy and memory temporarily lost. Cranking her pained eyes open, she found herself staring into the familiar cold blue of her friend’s eyes.

"Novia? Why are you up so early?" Larka mumbled, covering her eyes from the abominable light with a hand. Usually Larka was the sort of person who cheerily woke others up at ungodly hours, avoiding any object thrown at her with good humour, but she had exhausted herself so last night doing absolutely nothing that  _Novia_  of all people rose before her.

"Early? Any later and we'll be late for McGonagall's Transfiguration***!" Novia exclaimed, standing there with her hands on her hips.

Oh dear! Larka sat up rapidly and threw the blanket away with desperate urgency. Her eyes widened, and she scrambled to find a clock that wasn't there. Having the audacity to be  _late_  for Professor McGonagall always meant a spectacle, and Larka avoided spectacles like the plague of her life. Oh she can just  _imagine_  all those  _eyes_  on her, she shuddered.

"Wait," Larka remembered suddenly, "we don't have McGonagall first thing in the morning." Then she noticed Novia's victorious smile and collapsed back onto the bed with relief. Novia, however, forcibly snatched the pillow from underneath her and said in a sing-song voice, "Not that late, but if you loiter any longer, you'll miss the chocolate banana bread for breakfast!"

Breakfast was generally considered the most important meal of the day. And while Larka frequently got lost in academic pondering (e.g. whether cows could be charmed into herding themselves, or if the fabled ever-flowing wine in ancient Rome was really just a stabilized version of a summoning spell, or various other thought-provoking matters), she still respected its importance. She also took banana bread very seriously (they was hard to come by in the morning!)

Larka straightened her robe as they descended downstairs, hustling along the corridors with remarkable agility. "I can't find my wand," she announced at last, having checked every pocket at least thrice.

"I got it for you," Novia handed her the smooth wood, "It was on the floor."

"Ah!" Larka grinned gratefully. Despite Novia's caustic words, she really was a very good friend. "Thanks, I had thought I stuffed it in the robe last night."

"Speaking of which, what were you doing last night? Your eyes haven't been this red in ages!"

"Me? Oh, Sirius Black," Larka answered truthfully.

"Rule of thumb," a voice sounded behind their backs, "check your surroundings before the morning dose of gossip. Tsk, tsk, how would you ever pass your espionage O.W.L.s!"

"Oh, er, sorry," Larka said immediately, startled out of herself. Although to be fair, Larka was prone to being startled by sudden noises or lights, and even by photographs when they moved suddenly. She was persistently puzzled at how Muggle-borns ever got used to it.

Novia however, was a different story. She gave her best shot at nonchalance but was largely unsuccessful on account of the sudden redness on her ivory cheeks.

Larka cleared her throat, and searched for eloquence. "Err," she finally made out earnestly, if not intelligently.

"Yes, I too am often flabbergasted by the sight of my glory," Sirius grinned, "Morning, ladies," and strutted back to his group.

Ah Sirius, great, I have a grave matter to tell you, Larka thought futilely as she watched Sirius retreat too far for her to reply. The Americans called it escalator wit, but Larka didn't trust escalators; the French staircase wit was more familiar to her though, as often she found her wittiness when rising up to her dormitory. In this case, Larka thought wryly, it was more like standing-still-until-the-shadow-of-greatness-passed wit. She was vaguely comforted by Remus' sympathetic smile, although she wasn't sure why Remus was sympathetic. She quickly accepted that Remus mostly smiled at everybody in that calming, sympathetic way that was also slightly amused, but not at anybody's expense.

Well, there went the one shot she had, she thought as they entered the Great Hall.

Despite it being breakfast, the Great Hall was as pervasively rowdy as ever. The usual morning rituals occurred: students received letters, snack baskets from doting parents, brief skirmish due to the scarcity of banana bread or temperaments unsuited for early mornings.

At the staff table, Professor McGonagall rose to tap her fork against her crystal chalice in a gesture to silence the student population. Despite being the Gryffindor head, she was bestowed with this task every time the students needed a silencing. She was very good at it, and perhaps enjoyed it a bit too much, but it wasn’t in Larka’s place to pass judgment on anybody.

In any case, Larka continued to devour her food, slipping a few slices of chocolate chip banana bread into an envelope she made with napkins. (The table napkins were always surprisingly large and sturdy, and Larka had more than once imagined what purpose were they designed to serve—perhaps a quick tug of war or stuffing the turkey?) Today was Wednesday, and Wednesday was always her longest day, as she had to stay up late to study the night stars. It was actually a very agreeable assignment, if only she didn't have got to sacrifice so much sleep.

The Headmaster came forward to speak, but everybody knew what he was going to say anyway. It was  _that_  time of the year.

Although it was an anticipated message, it was also a beloved message, so the halls quieted down in short due, and the Headmaster cleared his throat ceremonially, "As many of you know, and more of you should know," he began, and an undercurrent of excitement was already brewing, "the first Friday of next month will mark the nine hundred and seventieth anniversary of the founding of Hogwarts."

Larka had genuinely been enthusiastic (if confused at the importance of such an odd number as nine hundred and sixty five) her first year. There were two formals each year, one for the school and one for the graduating Seventh Years, and more if the Headmaster could find some vaguely valid excuse for it. He was unusually fond of dances, this Headmaster of theirs, a quirk that was dear to the student population. Larka was indifferent, but she clapped anyhow, resolved to show support for the Headmaster. She had decided she liked him from the first moment she saw his crescent-moon shaped glasses. Such impracticality was a sure sign of genius and geniality, she believed.

"Such a celebratory occasion calls for a celebratory event," the Headmaster continued with a rosy glow. (A few faces among the faculty did not agree, and Filch the staff Caretaker especially did not share this jovial sentiment as he rolled his eyes and made a very funny face.)

"So in spirit of that, next Friday will be the Commemorative Ball of Celebratory Cheer, as we all agreed." (Filch definitely did not give his agreement in any shape or form, but the Headmaster had a dodgy definition of 'we all', as he grew to learn over the years.)

The First Years made some commotion, but McGonagall fulfilled her vigil and shushed them down with one steely glance, sweeping across the four Houses and leaving no First Year unafraid.

To ensure that the youths of tomorrow were not traumatized too greatly, however, Dumbledore himself swept the First Years with his twinkling eyes, and let every single one of them believe that he was winking to them specifically. (Larka always wanted to learn the charm for that—although she did not have glasses, but it was a useful sort of useless knowledge.) Dumbledore's intimate twinkling restored some of their bravado, and the noise levels increased accordingly.

This impacted Larka minimally, so she packed her banana bread and went on to her morning classes with Novia.

-.-.-.-

Larka had put the last quill away for Transfiguration, last of her and Novia’s morning classes. The idea of lunch in the dining hall was immediate and tantalizing when their teacher, Professor McGonagall, summoned Larka with the tone of the speakers calling up the next customer to approach the cashier, “Miss Roxburgh, a moment of your time, please.”

Larka stilled, a spasm of nervous contractions running in her stomach at the unexpected crisis. She dutifully turned towards the Professor, who was looking at her with slight impatience. Larka gripped her tote. Should she put it down, or bring it with her to the Professor’s desk? Should she put it down at the nearest desk or go back to where she was sitting before or place it on the floor beside her when she went over?

Professor McGonagall told her through a strained smile, “Put down your bag there and step up.”

Larka almost gushed in relief: she dropped everything where the Professor’s eyes had flickered to and hurriedly walked to the Professor.

“Miss Roxburgh,” the Professor undid the perfect perpendicular crisscross of her fingers to rearrange into another set of crisscrosses, “you recall the announcement this morning.”

Larka nodded, then quickly added a meek ‘Yes’ because not responding verbally might be considered rude.

“I’m putting you in charge of the event’s organization,” the Professor told a stricken Larka, “Consult the Prefects as needed and inform me when you deem necessary. I have the outlines here,” she pushed a tightly bound scroll towards her with two fingers. “I trust that you will follow each line item religiously.”

“I will do my best,” Larka promised, wrapping her hands around the gospel. She couldn’t fathom why the Professor sought a fifth year student instead of a Prefect for this role, and more specifically why  _her****_ , but such was the Professor’s command and she was not one to question.

"Off you go then," the Professor dismissed her with a slight nod, which Larka considered a great distinction coming from Minerva McGonagall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * James Charlus Potter’s famous (or infamous, depending on who you ask) flying skills suffered briefly during his Third Year, when he refused on all grounds to get glasses. He had called a neighbourhood boy ‘four-eyes’ since he could remember, and the idea of becoming the target of his own ridicule was too metaphysical a twist for his literal mind to justify at that point. It took a very humiliating duel with a Slytherin, in which five out of seven spells of his missed, for James to take up his signature round, gold rimmed glasses.
> 
> ** Technically called ‘The Gryffindor Blokes’ Wet Dream List’, compiled by Anonymous (in actuality, part of a four-chapter list composed by a Judith Garr in Ravenclaw), but Larka J. Roxburgh could not bring herself to even think of wet dreams.
> 
> *** There was indeed a Sirius Altair Black Appreciation Club, abbreviated SBAC and pronounced ‘speck’, which either ironically or intentionally fit the club’s charter of objectifying Sirius A. Black into a juicy cut of meat. Members were strictly by invite only, with an entrance fee of five sickles that came with a lifetime subscription to the quarterly Seriously Sirius magazine. The printing was costly, since they insisted that only the best parchments could even hope to capture a fraction of the gloss of Sirius’s hair—and main financial support came from auctioning articles that Sirius had signed, wore, or sweated in (occasionally all three, fetching a very pretty sum). The reaches of this club was far wider than one might suspect, and despite suffering severely on several occasions, was eventually revived during his later occupation.
> 
> **** Minerva McGonagall was notorious for her strict policy concerning tardiness. Once a student—a Gryffindor no less!—had stumbled in ten minutes late, his robe on backwards from haste, and was condemned to detention for a week. Nobody knew what he underwent for he wouldn’t say, but his spirit was thoroughly crushed and he arrived for the lessons a good fifteen minutes early each time. The rumours were that he was forced to play chess with Professor McGonagall.
> 
> ***** Minerva McGonagall did not say that although this technically fell under the duties of Prefects, she no longer trusted the compromised ranks to deliver the event with minimal fuss. Although she held a certain fondness for not only Remus John Lupin, but also his foolhardy and generally unruly friends, she hated balls. Students had such the most wildly inaccurate romanticized notions of balls, and it invariably turned into messes that the faculty had to clean up, detentions, and points off Gryffindor. Last year, for example, a marching band of Scottish troubadours had besieged the ball with lewd songs and baskets of firecracker Easter eggs. It was a wonder the castle hadn’t been burned down. And that was with Lily Evans in charge. This year, Minerva was resolved to have a perfectly ordinary dance. And there was no better candidate than Larka Janet Roxburgh to follow her instructions faithfully.


	4. 2. The Overwhelming Question

**Chapter 2**

**The Overwhelming Question**

“That bastard!” Novia’s vehement voice, although not loud, still pierced through the whirring of whispers and shuffling pages in the library.

Larka looked up from her scroll to offer a conciliating smile, “What is it?”

Novia grunted with disgust, “Cox,” she spat out.

Ah, Larka knew exactly why Novia was so upset now. It was only Friday, but Novia had already refused two invitations to the Ball. One of the inviters, Seth Cox, bitterly called Novia a supercilious bitch to anybody who would listen, and in a small school in a remote location that was mostly everybody. Larka didn’t think Novia was being purposefully mean or haughty. Sure, she did call Seth a ‘loser’ and a ‘mindless twit’, but if Novia didn’t like him, then Novia didn’t like him, it was nobody’s fault. Emotions were an inherently illogical business to start with; Larka wished Seth wouldn’t take it so personally.

But her father always said that gossip was more transitory than the fashion fads that Mum tried to understand from magazines. “It’ll pass over soon enough,” Larka assured her friend, “When something else happens to somebody else.”

“Whatever,” Novia shook her hair as if she could shake off the ill feelings, “I’ll get my own date. But why are you reading the thing again?” Novia pulled a face at the array of scrolls before Larka.

Larka self-consciously smooth the paper before her, containing her notes that she made from Principal McGonagall’s guiding scroll, of which she had read, reread, summarized, and all but memorized word for word.

She couldn’t fully explain to Novia in a few words why arranging the Ball just right was so important. Larka had never hosted any event before, so by being responsible for this Ball, she would technically be hosting her ‘debut’. Hosting was a critical fixture of the pureblood lady’s domestic duties, the equivalent of the male Quidditch outing or the more archaic hunting trip. This Ball will draw social commentary on her abilities, which will affect whom among her peers she would be able to invite to the future teas and luncheons she would hold (or at least the future teas and luncheons Mum would want to hold in her name).

Now, Larka wasn’t a very good pureblood girl, mostly because her mother wasn’t a very good pureblood woman*, and their family was hardly considered in pureblood standing given their so many generations of mixed-blood marriages. As such, Larka actually enjoyed much freedom in her youth. She enjoyed the curious pastime of playing make-believe in the rolling hills by herself (being far from the local town, they had few neighbours and none with children her age). When her parents came home, she listened to her dad reading fairy tales out of a battered book (actually an anthology of contemporary short fiction which Mr Roxburgh put in an Andersen dust jacket; he believed in not shielding children from the truths of the world, a belief that Mrs Roxburgh had much to say about). On the weekends, her favourite activity was lying on the grass and watching the wind sift through the trees, sneakily plucking scarlet sage and nibbling on the sweet end of the flowers. (She always fell asleep to the slight buzz of what she imagined was a troupe of spectral trobairitz, like the wild hunt, but nicer, and always woke up later on her little pine bed with apple green counterpane on the second floor.) She passed her youth like that instead of sitting for the traditional Marriageable Skills of Latin, French, and Italian grammar, piano and Shakespeare, floristry and painting, and indeed escaped even most of the unisex skills required of all proper little patrician children: art and finery appraisal, dancing and philosophy, poetry and magical theory. Mrs Roxburgh drew the final line at etiquette and housekeeping lessons however, but her governess was prone to daydreaming so it hardly hindered Larka’s development into a realistic and serene young lady.

Yet Larka knew that Mum had always harboured a secret dream of breaking into haut monde, and hosting this Ball would undoubtedly please her, so Larka was anxious to fulfil her role to the best of her abilities. Novia, blissfully bourgeois and from a mixed parentage family, didn’t understand—or rather, wouldn’t care to understand.

Larka kept her mouth shut and waited for Novia to continue talking.

“So when are you going to approach Remus about organizing the Ball?” Novia asked when she realized that Larka was obstinately unresponsive.

“I have to make sure I have every detail down first,” Larka said. She was also trying to decide which of the Prefects to approach first. Harrison Stern wasn’t involved with last year’s Ball; Remus Lupin’s friends were so intimidating; Larka didn’t think she had actually ever even seen Sidney Beckett in the dining hall ever; perhaps Lily Evans, but even she was a little terrifying if Larka was being honest.

Novia rolled her eyes, “You know how many girls would swoon at this chance? You now have a compelling excuse to talk to—be near—Remus and so _James Potter_ and, well, Sirius!”

Oh, Larka hadn’t thought of it that way, but what if she messed something up? What if she said something irredeemably stupid? Eloquence never came to her in the moment of things. What if they saw right through her conniving? What if they messed up the event? Larka didn’t think she had the mental fortitude to do this ‘ulterior motive’ thing right.

“And,” Novia added emphatically, “Having you as a linkage to Remus would make it my perfect opportunity!”

Larka blinked, “For what?”

“For me to ask Sirius to the Ball, silly!”

“You will?” Larka asked, surprised.

“Sure,” Novia shrugged, “Why not? He’s so good-looking and interesting. I like him, I think.”

Ah, but of course! The Byronic hero was an out-dated trope that manifested by an out-dated mode of courtship. She had been very silly, Larka admitted, to overlook the female agency. Of course Novia would head along the correct path without her assistance. That was her Novia, Larka thought with great fondness, solving the world’s problems with such gusto. “Alright!” she picked up some of Novia’s enthusiasm, “I’ll talk to Remus; just as soon as I finish these notes!”

Novia shoved the scrolls into her arms, “Which will be _tonight_. You can do with some reading material in that tower of yours anyhow.”

Fair point, Larka slipped her things into her bag, careful to separate the scrolls from the banana bread. “Well I’ll be on my way then.”

“Tonight!” Novia cried out as Larka left the room.

“As you wish, my lady” Larka said.

Which was definitely easier said than done. During dinner, Novia kept reminding Larka to seek out Remus in a manner she thought subtle. It wasn’t as if Larka was purposefully avoiding the task, really, but she hadn’t seen even the shadow of any of the clique of boys: Larka doubted she could just serendipitously cross paths with any of them.

“Excuses,” Novia had said, and Larka had no rebuttal.

So after dinner, she went to the Gryffindor common room, but did not find her target.

But she did see a group of students sitting in a circle in front of the fireplace sharing a bottle of something clear—and was that Leon Patmore among them? Leon was a Prefect as well, and Novia had pointed him out once before at a party and said to look out for his wandering hands. Larka paced back and forth a few feet away from them, wondering if she should ask Leon about the Ball.

“You want something?” the girl closest to Larka twisted around to ask her after a few minutes, when it was clear that Larka wasn’t going away. Larka knew her as Lila Burton, who started dating Leon about two weeks ago. Lila had a lovely angular face that looked like Edward Robert Hughes painted every feature, and Larka was intimidated without knowing if Lila was annoyed or just looked like that.

“No—I mean, yes.” Great start.

“Babe?” Leon, the large, thick-necked boy with his arm around Lila turned her way and said impatiently.

“Er, Leon Patmore?” she asked him tentatively.

The boy tipped his head to crack a bone in his neck—Larka winced, the sound of cracking bones struck her nerves—and smirked as he noticed her wince. “The one and only,” he drawled delightedly.

“I uh, I wanted to talk to you about the upcoming Ball.”

“He’s going with me,” Lila said in a bored tone, as if she was too tired of repeating herself.

“Oh no,” Larka flushed, seeing how misleading her words had been, “I wasn’t going to ask _that_.”

Lila shrugged and went back to the bottle.

“Why don’t you?” Leon asked.

Larka ignored his question because she didn’t know how to answer it. “Professor McGonagall asked me to coordinate the Ball, and since it’s part of Prefect duty, technically, I was wondering if—”

“Hun, you’re barking up the wrong tree. I didn’t do anything last year and I certainly don’t want to do it this year.”

“Oh,” Larka fidgeted with the ends of her hair, “Er, sorry then, uh, to bother you.”

“You want a drink?” Leon winked at her. Lila swatted him on the arm but Leon still held up the bottle. The label said ouzo and Larka didn’t even know what it was.

“No thank you,” Larka said and then fled to the sound of snickers behind her.

Not to be deterred by that one experience, Larka continued to search for Remus. He wasn’t in the library. She checked the dining hall again in case he was there for a late dinner. There wasn’t any other place that she could think of, and the sky outside was turning stormy. Perhaps he had gone to sleep? Larka took to wandering the school listlessly, not wanting to go back to her room and admit to Novia that she failed.

By near curfew, she felt like defeat was the only option. A storm had drawn up outside, smudging the landscape dark grey, with bolts of rain viciously smacking the windows. She watched the war in the sky outside with fascination: contrary to popular belief, cloud movement was an important part of astrology as well. Then very quickly her thoughts turned to the stability of the tower structure: it was up so high into the sky like a lightning rod. She supposed she ought to trust ancient Hogwarts: it probably was indestructible.

A side door to the outside opened suddenly and Larka found her target Gryffindor lodestars. Remus, along with his ever present companions James, Sirius, and Peter, were drenched, hair and robes dripping rainwater despite their best efforts to cast drying spells. Only Remus had mild success, but it was clear that the others were not too well versed in the art of housework charms. James had squeezed most of the water out of his hair with a twisted jumper, but it stuck outwards at the most bizarre angles, and in his struggle with his hair he all but ignored his other body parts. Sirius cast a spell on James first, filled the air with the smell of singed cloth, and then tried it on his clothes, a bit more effective this time. Peter was despairingly trying to change his left shoe back from a shade of galling pink. Remus sighed and dried the others in turn, but in negligence or a streak of prankish humour, left Peter’s shoe alone.

Larka took a deep breath (which did not help), and thought of how to accost Remus.

“Mates,” Remus sighed, “with all your Transfiguration prowess, you’d think a First Year _drying_ spell wouldn’t be so hard.”

“Excuse _me_ , Mister I-Do-Not-Have-a-House-Elf,” Sirius responded to the insult on his person, “I’ll have you know that I, the epitome of nonchalance and good poise, do not practice nonsense such as _drying_ in my spare time.”

James took a moment from flattening his hair to snort, “Which is why you perpetually smell of _wet dog_.”

Sirius bristled indignantly, a silly sight given the way his hair flopped down to his grey eyes, “Nonsense, I smell of tobacco, leather, oud, and splendour; even wet, I am an olfactory delight,” he sniffled, either conjuring the image of some Victorian dandy or his nose was congested from the rain. Probably both.

“In _any_ case,” Peter interjected as the voice of reason, “can we _please_ get back to our room? I can’t let anybody see me in _pink slippers_.” He pointed loathingly to his feet.

All three of the others burst out laughing, and still none of them took their wands to reverse it.

“We’ll go, of course, now,” Remus promised in between manly giggles.

“Only the truly confident pulls off the colour like you do, Monsieur Wormtail!” Sirius declared.

“Fine, laugh at my expense,” Peter grumbled.

“But,” Sirius wagged a finger at the dour-faced little man, “you have yet to hear the next instalment of the Great Retaliatory Stratagem!”

“Get on with it,” Peter said in defeat.

And Sirius did, gesturing wildly, outlining the plans for, as Larka understood it from the fragments she heard now, a prank. How shocking. “—At which point, the floors will open up, the ceiling will burst with a thousand colours like the flickering chariot of Merlin, and we will make our exit in grace and grandeur! Oh, ahoy there!” Sirius waved at Larka, who felt like she had been hit with a petrification spell. He smiled with an intimacy that suggested they have been friends for years. It made Larka uncomfortable.

“Er, yes, ahoy?” she greeted.

Sirius seemed to grin wider, if that was at all possible.

She cleared her throat. “Sorry, I’m, uh, looking for—” she began.

James ended it for her, “James the Magnificent? At your service. Sirius the Madman? The devil over there,” He ruffled Sirius’s hair and looked at her expectantly, as if this happened every day.

Larka resisted the urge to fidgeted with her hair and said, “No, actually, I’m looking for Remus Lupin.” Who was looking at her in placid surprise.

“Is there something I can do for you?” Remus spoke softly. Larka was sure he didn’t remember her, but they crossed paths a few times, and they both frequented the library.

She resolved to meet his calm, honey gaze, “Professor McGonagall wanted me to coordinate the Ball, and I would need to consult the Prefects, since you did it last year—”

“Of course!” James was getting into a habit of interrupting her, “We’ll help out! Brill! When should we begin? Tomorrow, of course, as early as can be! Get everybody involved!”

He was zealous to the point of being slightly scary.

“Oh Remus you _dog_ ,” Sirius winked with some humour that Larka failed to get, “you have all the luck of the house today, my good man! To be able to assist such a distressingly beautiful specimen!”

Larka did not know if she ought to be offended at being referred to as a _specimen_ , even if it was a beautiful one.

James clouted Remus on the back. “Indeed, after six whole _years**_ , about _time_ you spread around those _dashing_ good looks of yours!”

“Ignore the two nutcases,” Remus said pleasantly, “when do you want to get together then? I’ll get Lily as well.”

“Oh, James said tomorrow—”

The door slammed again and all five instinctively sought out the source.

It was a short, plump redhead in a green and silver robe smeared with mud and drenched in water: she left behind a trail of murky water as she limped up the hallway, her feet dragging as if she was wading upstream against the current instead of walking on level ground.

When she noticed the five staring at her, she froze in her tracks and trembled.

James was the first to comment, his voice piercing through the silence like Robin Hood’s arrows, “Oy, Slytherin mud getting mud inside,” he sneered. Then he frowned and asked worriedly, “Do we look like that after a match?”

After a rainy Quidditch match, it was as if a giant had left mud trails all over Gryffindor, and James, like the rest of the football team, tended to be caked in a hundred layers of grime. But this Slytherin girl was not a Quidditch captain, and so her dirt was not made of glory and sweat and cheering; it was just dirt. Larka felt immediate sympathy as the girl shrunk back in mortification.

“Only you,” Sirius replied, “who needs to be reintroduced to the concept of a shower each time.

“But doesn’t the rain count as a shower?” James countered facetiously.

“Not when you look like one of those advertisements for mud baths.”

“Mud baths sound kind of fun actually,” James said wistfully, “We should think about going on a cruise or something during the winter.”

“I can’t,” Remus said, “you know that.”

“Oh come on,” James nudged Remus, “You know I’m perfectly happy to—”

“Or we can go crayfish fishing,” Peter piped in, “Mum got one from the mud river last summer, fed it all the dead sparrows that killed themselves against our windows.”

James made a vague noise of disgust.

“Makes me homesick,” Sirius sighed, “all this mud. It’d be a wonderful gift to Kreacher, if I could figure out a way to bring it back exactly like she’s doing.”

They were not malignantly bullying the girl, it was just that their jokes came at her expense, and they didn’t seem to realize how much their words meant. Larka found their exchange extremely fascinating, because she did not know about mud bathing or crayfish before, but she was also sorely reminded of how similar inconsideration and cruelty could be. The poor girl was blushing so furiously now that Larka could have fried eggs on her cheeks, her face turning into a tomato, round and flushed, red tendrils near her nose.

“Mates,” Remus admonished half-heartedly, and then added to Larka, “Why don’t you go help her?”

Larka was just going to, but raised an eyebrow at Remus with the implicit question of ‘why don’t you’.

He raised his own eyebrows and tipped his head towards his still bantering friends, as if to say ‘Here are my people’.

Fair enough, Larka nodded. She merely took out her wand and did a simple cleaning spell. It didn’t do wonders—the girl’s robe was still ruined by all means—but at least it took care of the lumpy mud. If she were a more powerful witch, she could wrap the girl in a rainbow hued nimbus cloud. (But perhaps the colours would be hard to get out of the curtains? She didn’t want to cause trouble for the elves.)

“Do you want to go to the Hospital Wing,” Larka asked gently, “for your leg?” She had a hearty face, round and full. Her eyebrows were so faint and scattered that it took a bit of concentration to notice them, and Larka couldn’t help but think she was the most harmless creature that she had ever laid eyes on. (Certainly not a crayfish. Larka hadn’t fished crayfish before, but they sounded like they would snip her fingers.) She didn’t look like a Slytherin, but then again, Larka had always thought it rather unfair that the Hat decided a person’s future, their entire, unknown life ahead of them, when they was but eleven. Larka also remembered all the horror stories that her older cousin told her when their families got together for Christmas****, but she was now fifteen, and old enough to see what bias was.

The girl’s face was damp with rain or tears, but she shook her head.

The girl’s leg definitely needed tending though, “Let’s sit on the steps for a cup of tea, how about that?” Larka enticed with what she herself would have found irresistible. She hoped her healing spells would be enough.

The girl hesitated, chanced a quiet look at Larka before bowing down again, but then she nodded. She tenderly took Larka’s outreaching hand and allowed to be guided to the stairs.

“I’m Kelso Meadows,” the girl offered timidly.

“Larka Roxburgh,” she replied. Larka had heard about this girl: a quiet girl who transferred here from some school that no one remembered***. She was to finish her education at Hogwarts, but all the other Fifth Years have already grouped into friends and foes for years, and it was hard to be neither a friend nor a foe.

Remus, meanwhile, was shepherding the boys to leave. Even James and Sirius, with all their animosity towards Slytherins, did not needlessly hate this harmless little girl.

“Oh Larka,” Remus called out before they turned the corner.

“Oh,” she was surprised he still remembered her, “Yes?”

“Would you be free at around, say, seven tomorrow?”

Larka felt Kelso jolt in her hand and pacifyingly patted her arm. “Of course—early dinners are good—dinners were noontime meals before they were delayed incrementally, a shame for the digestive system.” Larka paused to stop her tumbling words. The essence of the matter, she told herself, only the essence of the matter. “I meant, sure, where can I find you?”

Remus looked her in a funny way before answering, “The library.”

Of course. “Alright.”

“See you then.” Then, like a floating spectre coming out of a gingerbread house with a marshmallow roof, they all vanished.

The whole incident left with Larka a lasting image of gingerbreads, and Larka spent the entire next day hoping that dinner might offer some gingersnaps. Perhaps she ought to mention it to Yiddy, the house-elf who was the matriarch of the kitchen staff—but frankly, Larka was terrified of Yiddy; so she resolved to just hope very intensely. Unfortunately, hoping for something rarely meant she got it, and dinner proved to be _sans_ gingersnap.

Disappointed but not surprised, Larka abandoned the sport of dessert eating and headed up to the library while Novia and Kelso dined merrily on snow pea ice cream.

It was an odd sight, a Slytherin eating at the Gryffindor table, but Kelso had attached herself to her and Novia. When Larka left Kelso last night, Kelso seemed so deeply despondent that Larka asked if she would like to join her and Novia for breakfast. Kelso first looked hesitantly hopeful, but immediately say yes and asked when she could go meet her at the Gryffindor tower, anxiously eager as if she was expecting Larka to change her mind at any second. It touched Larka; she wished she could assure Kelso somehow, tell her that there was a place for her in the world, that a bashful nature and being thrust into already developed circles was not her fault, that she was valued—but Larka did not have the right words. She doubted if the right words existed for Kelso. So instead she told Novia about Kelso it after she reported her success with Remus. Novia enthusiastically declared that she would take this Kelso under her wings and was determined to set a first-rate example of having a steel backbone.

The three of them hit it off like they had been friends forever. Larka felt good about leaving the two to themselves as she climbed the stairs.

It was only six thirty so she would be early, but Larka thought that she could find a cosy, out of the way corner to settle in first; ideally next to the section with those large, sprawling scrolls of maps, so that she might sneak a glance. (She had always wanted to check out a collection of Aksum urban blueprints from the third century, but alas, the high and majestic Madam of the library never quite trusted her with ancient documents ever since she returned a manuscript documenting the warfare of the Yuezhi with Novia’s drool in a corner, where the girl had napped on.)

To Larka’s dismay, once she opened the door to the library, she saw that Remus was already seated in the far back of the empty library, half of his face obscured by a mountain of books that trembled with transfiguration magic inside.

She trotted over to where he sat. His index finger was trailing along the end of a paragraph, so she stopped at a distance. She disliked it when people disrupted her reading, so it was only polite that she waited out of his peripheral sight.

Despite her unobtrusive courtesy, Remus raised his head anyhow, peering up at her, eyes a soft golden hue yet somehow unreasonably steely.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hullo,” he said politely, “you’re early.”

“Yes, you are too though.”

He hummed. “Lily will be here shortly. The other Prefects,” Remus gave a wry smile, “felt like we could handle it without their additional assistance.”

Oh well, Larka couldn’t begrudge them for not wanting extra work with minimal appreciation. “I’ll put in my best effort,” she promised.

The corner of Remus’s mouth twitched a little. “Of course,” he answered curtly, which might or might not have been sarcastic.

“Ah,” Larka, desperate to stay social, said. She coughed a little and looked at Remus. His robe was perhaps crisp purple some time ago, but time and neglect had faded it into a muddy, baffling sort of colour, like the residue from winemaking. “Er,” she started hopelessly, “the library is a lovely place to be away from watching other people, isn’t it?”

Remus looked at her curiously.

Perhaps he thought she worded it strangely, so she tried to rectify, “I mean, having people around is like leaving the television on, and I can’t help but watch in a slightly voyeuristic way.” Larka blanched, that came out all wrong. “I’m sorry, that sounds creepy, I just—,” she frowned. What exactly did she think? What had possessed her to think that somehow he, Remus Lupin, Prefect and King of Gryffindor, would share her painful self-consciousness? “I’m sorry,” she settled for apologizing again.

“No need,” he said neutrally, but Larka thought his eyes seemed less steely now. Then, as if he felt sorry for her one-sided efforts to make small talk, Remus asked, “So I take it that you’re keen on libraries?”

“Why of course. I like reading novels*****. Although I don’t really understand what the problem is most of the time; most conflicts seem to be based on pointless misunderstandings that would be resolved with a timely conversation, but I guess artistic liberties,” she shrugged, “Conflicts are hard to come by otherwise.”

Remus chuckled and shook his head. Larka was unsure if he was disagreeing with her, or which part he was disagreeing with. He seemed about to say something when an incautiously loud greeting approached them.

It was Sirius Black, a presence as commanding as a whirlwind even covered in dirt and sweat, blazing into the sanctuary. A short cigarette was between his teeth, faint smoke rising from the end so short that it could be called a butt.

“Not breaking a profound scene, I hope?” he said through his teeth. Not pausing for a second, he pulled up a chair and collapsed onto it, limbs sprawled out haphazardly. He laid there much like a man with frail nerves would before his physician, as if his bones had melted. Taking the cigarette from his mouth with his left hand, he grinned and said, “But what scene could be profound in the absence of me?”

Larka blinked. He was just a little obnoxious, but somehow felt like it was deliberate.

“This is a private meeting, you know?” Remus looked pointedly at the prohibited item in Sirius’s hand.

Sirius rolled his eyes and muttered something about rules up his arse, but crushed it in his fist. Larka winced at the phantom burn she felt in her own hand.

“Your mortal enemy Lily’s coming in fifteen,” Remus stated.

“But Remus, I’m _knackered_!” Sirius flopped down on the table and rested his head on a pillow of his two hands. “They would never think of looking for me here!”

“Good to know you have that much self-awareness.”

“ _Remus_ ,” he pleaded like a child who knew his tactics worked, “there’s nowhere else that is somewhere with people but you know, not _people_ —civilization away from the sweat of people _._ Why, you two would hardly notice me!” He gave a lopsided smile and lifted his eyebrows so that he looked puppy eyed.

“You _always_ beg for attention, Sirius, even when you’re passed out on the floor.”

“But that’s only because out of the fervent love you secretly harbour for my hair, you can’t allow this hair to drown in gorging vomit!”

“My point exactly: you need attention even when unconscious.”

“But now,” Sirius rebutted, “I can consciously prevent my unconscious demands.”

Remus scoffed, for good reason too: Sirius was being so blatantly childish and so assured that others would indulge him.

“My body would _shatter_ into _dust_ particles and self-combust if I don’t rest here! Take pity on me!”

“You’ve got to ask if it’s alright with Larka, not me.”

Larka had watched this exchange in silent wonder. If only his fan club could see their nonpareil idol behaving as such. Their idolatry—including Novia’s—came crashing down on her, an oppressive weight, even though it was not of her own making.

Sirius turned his shining eyes on her and immediately frowned. “What are you gaping at?”

The correct response would have been denial (‘Gaping? What gaping?’), but she was indeed gaping and quickly closed her mouth—too quickly, for her teeth clanged. “Nothing,” she said, hoping to sound collected, “You just surprised me, is all.”

“Of course I did,” Sirius sneered, as if to be surprised was somehow a great offence. “In any case, you don’t mind me staying here and not even breathing, do you darling?”

She blinked. “No cause to suffocate, I should think.”

Sirius winked to Larka, “It’s not usually me who can’t breathe when it comes to private sessions.”

Larka blushed deeply and refused to dwell on it.

“Not that,” Sirius continued on, “ _you’d_ know anything about that.”

“You’re right, I don’t,” Larka stated matter-of-factly. Her father always said to return rudeness with politeness, because nothing in the world was as frustrating as getting a nonresponse. (Well, her father also said something about the rude turning into green and finally physically bursting from thwarted ill will, but Larka rather thought that was metaphorical.)

But Sirius had already buried his head in his arms, his face jammed into the crook of his elbow and fake snoring drifting dissonantly.

This might (definitely) turn disastrous.

-.-.-.-

Remus felt terrible.

The planning session for the Ball had gone quite well actually, with Lily being quite obstinate on the proper entrapments and Larka adamant on following McGonagall’s outlined rules to a t. People might not like the professor—and most of the student population did not—but nobody held even a trace of disrespect for her efficacy. Remus would never challenge orderly conduct publicly anyhow, so the three made much progress.

No, what made him feel so goddamn terrible was Sirius (as often was the case). Unlike James, Sirius seemed to lack the ability to coexist with people outside of a select marked few, and was as exhausting as he was irresistible. Whereas everybody seemed to like James (or at least publically), Remus often felt like he had to apologize on Sirius’s account.

Although, frankly, he should have apologized on his own account as well. Remus had started off being a bit mordant. He did not want another girl trying him as a stepping stone to James or Sirius. It was a common enough tactic, but one that tired him with its utter lack of regard for him as a real, breathing person. He had also seen his share of birds approaching him with books clutched tightly to their low-cut blouses. As if, he mentally scoffed, he would be stricken with true love at anybody who _loved_ books or with cleavage. Just because he got good marks did not mean he was emotionally stunted.

Yet this one, this Larka, had perhaps unwittingly struck a chord with him.

Despite disliking the attention of other people, Remus spent a great deal of his time watching others—people, especially people like James and Sirius, who were like compacted soap operas in live action. Vivacious, colourful, attractive, they were fit to stand the gaze of millions (although not calm or serious, like Emerson demanded). Remus himself preferred to watch; he had learned to mask his self-consciousness around other people from a young age, but he had never been cured of it. How many days—how many _years_ did he spend, watching others pass by like gliding words on a page, his own quietness fitting around him like a glove? And yes, like Larka said, it was kind of voyeuristic and kind of creepy. A sense of covert familiarity hit him, like a kleptomaniac catching another stealing, and he smiled.

Then Sirius happened.

Sirius was always such a berk whenever he felt like a bird unduly judged him by rumours and his last name without knowing him at all, but he himself was uninhibitedly judgmental. Remus felt vaguely and unnecessarily guilty about the collateral damage of Sirius’s moods. Maybe he could keep the havoc wrecked at the Ball to a minimum? The event seemed important to Larka for some reason.

-.-.-.-

Sirius took the last drag out of his Embassy, letting the smoke roll in his lungs before puffing out a long breath out like a sigh. He bit into the end of the cigarette and headed into the castle. He was too tired and frustrated to be hungry, and the nicotine should curb his appetite for a while. He skipped up the stairs two or three steps at a time, deliberately jutting his shoulder into a foppish looking bloke coming down. He smirked when the bloke stumbled, cursed, and then quickly descended once he saw who it was.

Sirius was honest to The Ever Praised but Probably Secretly Insane Merlin not usually this obnoxious. If pressed, he would even swear on the posters of fit birds in short shorts that hung opposite of his bed. He was just truly knackered, _utterly_ broken to his goddamn bones, _hollowed_ with fatigue. They had a secret Quidditch practice, and of _course_ some blabbermouth just _had_ to tell his blabbermouth girlfriend, who then brought at least _half_ the bloody birds of the _entire_ school to watch. So not only was he beaten up by the blasted Bludgers, he also had his ears pierced by bloody screeching.

He knew that Remus would be in his corner in the library, and thought that he should probably go there to pass out—no doubt the dormitory would be obnoxiously full of people and James who was trying so hard to talk to Evans without a sock stuffed into his face. He didn’t fancy either.

When he got there, some bird was with Remus. He couldn’t remember where he had seen her before, but she seemed to be a quiet, unimposing sort of non-person. The moment he sat down though, he felt he could see the disappointment in her eyes. She continued to stare at him like he was a fucking blob sculpin. This always happened: the moment birds saw something other than a morose, mysterious Darcy, they acted like he was a disappointment. One bloody look upon his face and they decided his character; one look at his fucking last name and decided his entire bloody being. Well _fuck_ that; he didn’t deserve any of it. All these cockeyed balls-up tossers, passing judgment on him before he ever gave them anything to judge, and then had the nerve to say he was not what _they_ thought. They’re rapists of the soul; might as well just shoot themselves and rid the world of a latent plague of sperms and ovaries, making ferociously ugly babies with just as much intellectual defect as their imbecilic progenitors.

He jeered in a crass way that he knew was humiliating, yet she responded like she was either daft or weirdly earnest. Perhaps he had misjudged her? But Sirius Altair Black was never wrong about people!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * Missus Prudencia Roxburgh’s maiden name was Macmillan and was extremely distantly related to the Macmillan of the Sacred Twenty-Eight. Young Prudencia Macmillan did not receive any traditional pureblood education, despite of what she told Larka J. Roxburgh. Prudencia learned what little French from language books she bought, begged her parents for piano lessons, and regularly got scolded for cutting up flowers in their garden in the name of learning floristry. She got her first real job as a waitress at the local diner the summer when she was sixteen, and with her first pay check (a handful of crumpled cash) she bought a proper tea set. When she went to Hogwarts, she suffered through many philosophy books despite them boring her to tears, subsisting only on the singular passion to revive the noble blood in her heritage. Prudencia had wanted to marry into a minor pureblood family—maybe the second son of a Carrow or a Yaxley—but pesky true love got in the way and she married Kenneth Roxburgh instead.
> 
> ** The claim that Remus John Lupin had not preyed upon a girl in six whole years was not strictly accurate. Remus had gone on a handful of dates, and even briefly entertained a girlfriend back in Fourth Year. Remus had not, however, gone further than snogging the bird, so James did not count that. Remus also briefly fancied the prettiest girl in Ravenclaw in Fifth Year (such nice hair, he used to pine), but she was gorgeous and a Seventh Year and had just broken things off with her ex-boyfriend Lloyd Curtiss. Of course Sirius A. Black swooped in to play wingman out of solidarity and mischief. The Ravenclaw girl ended up asking Sirius out, so all of them preferred not to remember this episode.
> 
> *** Larka J. Roxburgh was not the best at the specifics of British education. Kelso Dorcas Meadowes was a student who graduated from a prep school, The Private School of Enchantments and Charm-Work. Larka was thinking of Arlene Day, the transfer student from Gently’s School of Holistic Theory. These were drastically different people.
> 
> **** Missus Prudencia Roxburgh née Macmillan’s side of the family had as many Slytherins as Gryffindors actually, so perhaps her Gryffindor cousin had exaggerated a few tales, both in vengeance against his own Slytherin brother, or to encourage a kindred Gryffindor spirit in Larka so they might tip the scales in the Gryffindor favour. He did not take into account that exploding smelly bombs and conjured ghost pirates might traumatize an anxious ten-year-old girl. Larka did not end up with a favourable opinion of either House.
> 
> ***** Larka J. Roxburgh enjoyed fiction the same way some people enjoyed snuff, that was, it puzzled but amused her at the same time. Her time spent with nonfiction stories led her to believe that fiction was actually easier to believe and also gave her much less guilt over simply being alive. She was the sort to feel uneasy whenever a professor accused anybody of wrongdoing—not because she ever participated in any wrongdoing, but that she was pulled by an urge to confess. Fiction stories, illogical as they were most of the time, made her feel much less lonely in her own illogical feelings. Along with watching other people, fiction taught her what sort of behaviour and emotions were expected of a normal human being.


	5. The Gentleman Caller

**Chapter** **3**

**The Gentleman Caller**

Autumn at Hogwarts always was over quicker than expected. The morning air grew to have a bite in it, and soon it took more magic than anybody cared to use on maintaining leaves and grass green, so the lawn and forests turned red and golden—Gryffindor colours!—and then brown, until with a shock, Hogwarts found frost on its grounds.

For Larka, however, this autumn was unlike any other in her previous fifteen years of experience. On one hand, her friends Novia and Kelso got along famously, the Slytherin girl filling a space that neither knew was empty to begin with, and the duo turned into a trio. Kelso’s cheeks were naturally red like she had been facing a bitter winter wind, and it filled Larka with joy to see those cheeks always pinched up in a smile when together with them. Larka had even won points for Gryffindor!—although she shrank into her seat when all the students turned to look at her after McGonagall’s announcement. She had, in a bout of genius, successfully transformed a pocket watch into a time bomb. McGonagall had asked for a cuckoo clock, but since a time bomb was by far the more intricate transfiguration, she praised Larka as Larka frantically tried to reverse her spell. The bomb ticked away wilfully, and in the end Kelso had defused it by pulling out all the coloured wires*. It was a miracle that nothing blew up (calling into question the actual success of the transfiguration), but a bigger miracle was ten points to Gryffindor for a superb spell and an admirable display of teamwork.

On the other hand, she had begun to spend a large portion of her waking hours mediating between Lily Evans and James Potter. At the second Ball meeting, James, Sirius, and Peter showed up uninvited (at least on Larka’s part). Lily’s objections fell on deaf ears, and since Larka clearly removed herself from the confrontation, the buy-one-Remus-get-three-free deal became a permanent fixture to every group meeting. Tension was high from the onset, and it gave Larka a splitting headache every time she was thrust in the middle. Technically, Remus should have been in the middle, but since Remus merely smiled, somehow at every impasse all eyes fell inescapably upon Larka. In any case, it was not as if Larka can begrudge the soft-eyed Remus, or the fiery Lily for that matter, or even or even the thick-necked, handsome James so she bore her briars willingly.

Every day they ran this script, more or less:

James: Oh my luminous lily-flower, heed my passion!

Lily: Sod off.

Sirius: Why, obstacle runs in true love’s course! In this case, the troll and the princess are one and the same. Must be a curse.

James: But Lily-flower—

Lily: I’m _not a flower_!

Peter: Well your namesake—

Lily: _Is my grandmother!_

Sirius: Actually, I changed my mind. Not a troll; a _dragon_ is more befitting. Fire-breathing and all.

James: Whatever—or I guess whoever—you’re named after has no consequence, a Lily by any other name is still the light of my life, fire—er, how did it go again?

Peter: Loins, I believe. Fire of my loins.

James [delighted]/Lily [aghast]: Peter!

Peter: What? We read it in Muggle Studies! First page! Only page I got to, to be honest.

Sirius: Any tale predominantly featuring a dragon ought to be a good tale.

_Remus, still engrossed in his Arithmancy coursework, managed to turn a page. (Was Larka the only one who was writing down the specific number and type of hors d'oeuvres needed?)_

Larka: Er, Peter, that’s _Lolita_ , and a tip, it’s not very good source material for everyday conversation.

Peter: Oh gee, thanks!

Larka: And James, I think you meant a Lily by any other name would smell just as—

James: Luminous!

Lily: Do you _know_ any _other_ word, Potter you pompous _toerag_!

James: More than you, since you’ve been calling me a toerag since _First Year_.

Sirius: Apropos, you know what I’ve _never_ gotten as a gift? Yet, at least? [Beat.] A dragon egg. Imagine that. You’d think anybody who pays attention to what I say would’ve gotten the hint a long time ago.

Larka: I doubt you will, Sirius, being illegal to procure, but good luck.

Sirius [beaming]: Now there are some manners! This downtrodden world, I tell you, in my days, wee little children were brought up with _manners_.

Lily: I can’t. I just can’t.

James: Deny your hidden attraction to me anymore?

Sirius: Evans, have you ever considered dying your hair not-red? The last time I checked, I’m pretty sure red is reserved for roses. If I have less manners I’d say your parents were going down the wrong flower path there.

Peter: Didn’t she say it was after her grandma? Did I miss something?

Lily: Oh fucking Jesus, Mary, and Joseph Stalin.

Remus [putting down his quill]: Same time tomorrow then?

Larka [as Lily all but fled this feral group to stage left]: Have fun with your Divination homework!

It was like being in the middle of a Gilbert and Sullivan opera, which was something to be enjoyed on stage with memorable melodies and not being smack in the middle.

After a particularly bad day, Sirius kicked his feet up on the table and leaned his chair back, saying conversationally, “I think we advanced two centimetres in this trench war with Evans, what’d you say?”

James sighed wistfully as he ruffled his own hair, determined to get it to stick at just the right angles to pierce Lily’s formidable heart.

Remus gave a sympathetic grunt (or as sympathetic as grunts went), and Peter optimistically offered, “It took the Muggles a long time too!”

“Thanks, really cheering me up,” James grumbled, “You know what, I’m thinking that I might go alone to the Ball this year, since last year’s plan to get her jealous did mostly backfire.”

“Oy, it was the bird you chose,” Sirius said wisely, “Those glasses of yours don’t really help with taste. If I were Evans, I would be more worried about catching something rather than being overcome with jealousy.”

“Yes,” Remus commented dryly, “Sirius Black, always and only sage _after_ the fact.”

“You think I ought to try again this year?” James asked hopefully.

“Why,” Larka honestly couldn’t stop herself from cutting in, “don’t you try speaking normally to her? Not beginning every sentence with a profession of love, or why she should be in love with you?”

“But then what should I say?” James asked.

Larka flushed, she really was quite inexperienced. “I don’t know, the weather or something?”

“The _weather_?” Peter asked incredulously.

“Chocolate, flowers, and flowery language,” Sirius surmised, “the three tried and true tricks of courtship.”

“How can she be persuaded by my love if I don’t persuade her?” James said.

“I don’t think it should about persuading,” Larka said.

Remus shook his head at her, “Don’t even bother. It’s a lost cause.”

Larka didn’t understand any of them, least of all how Remus communicated with them. She would stand up and leave if she had the strength to stand up. Instead, she stayed limp in her chair, supported by the wooden back. It was only four thirty, and the strong daylight was pouring into the empty library with gleeful malice, reminding her that it was only four thirty. Merlin, they had another half hour of ‘meeting’ to go through.

However today, Larka was rescued by an unlikely ally, entering stage left into the vacant library.

“Novia!” Larka cried out.

It was indeed Novia, in a pastel peach draped tee shirt partially tucked into tight, flared Muggle jeans that accentuated her figure instead of looking homey. Novia had gone through tens, no probably _hundreds_ of jeans and tee shirts to find the perfect leg extending, bottom hugging, collarbone framing, tiny bit of cleavage showing outfit to create this carelessly sexy look. Her hair was done in a fishtail braid, but one that was tugged at so it looked half undone, like she had been partying through the night with it. She was more like a magazine cover than the illustration of a princess in a tower. She strolled beautifully towards them, hand immediately going to Larka’s hair in a comforting pat. “You look tired.”

“Hmm,” Larka murmured her agreement. She immediately knew what Novia was here for: at lunch today, Kelso had accepted one boy’s** invitation to the Ball with blushing propriety. While Novia was too pretty to feel jealousy, Larka still knew that instilled a sense of urgency in Novia.

“Are you going to be done soon?”

“In,” Larka looked at the distasteful window, “about half an hour.”

“Alright,” Novia nodded, “but remember we need to get some wax for our broomsticks.”

Larka didn’t have a waxing kit for her broomstick because she never waxed it. Diligent care for flying equipment was not one of her virtues, and neither was it one of Novia’s. “Of course,” still, she answered dutifully.

So Novia, dressed splendidly, then asked with complete nonchalance, “Oh by the way, Sirius, want to go to the Ball together? You know, just casually”

Sirius tilted his head, cocked his eyebrows, sucked in his cheeks a little, and—well, Larka wasn’t an expert on facial expressions, even less so on Sirius’s facial expressions, but somehow it seemed to her that Sirius looked somewhat annoyed.

“Sure,” he agreed equally nonchalantly, the hind legs of his chair at the precise point of balance.

Larka must have read him wrong then. In any case, it was surprising, wasn’t it? That this was all it took to ask out the great, elusive Sirius Altair Black? Kind of anticlimactic: not the sort of fulfilling development expected from _The Tenant of Wildfell Hall_ —although of course Larka was thrilled for her friend.

“Sure!” Novia gave great effort not to appear elated, but her eyes sparkled and the corners of her mouth were involuntarily drawn upwards.

A stretch of silence ensued, until Remus said, with great emphasis, “ _Mate_.”

“Oh,” Sirius seemed to break out of a daze, “Right, I’ll pick you up at, what, half an hour into the thing?”

“Yeah, sure, good, whatever,” Novia said coolly, squeezed Larka’s shoulders imperceptibly, spun around and left.

Something felt off to Larka, but she couldn’t say what.

-.-.-.-

“He said yes, he said _yes_ , _he_ said _yes_ , _he said yes_!” the moment Larka stepped into the Common Room, Novia threw herself upon Larka like a ball of tempest.

Well he said ‘sure’, but Larka wasn’t going to be pernickety. “I’m so happy for you,” she said sincerely.

Kelso also smiled happily, “Oh Novia, now you will be the belle of the Ball! Everybody will envy and love you! What a wonderful thing!”

-.-.-.-

“So, you’re taking that girl to the dance this year?” James asked Sirius when they returned to their suite, stepping in front of the cooing mirror in their bathroom. Sirius knew James didn’t care—he probably had even forgotten the bird’s name—but James liked listening to him babble on about nothing. Not that James listened to his digressing monologues, but maybe it was the sounds of his voice. Sirius couldn’t fault James for enjoying his rich and resonating voice.

“Why not,” Sirius shrugged, “If not her than another of the same.”

“There are plenty girls who aren’t the same,” Remus disputed as he reached for their stash and poured out three firewhiskeys, adding a splash of water for Sirius, which he both appreciated and was vaguely embarrassed by.

James smelled a trace of vulnerability and like a savage bird of prey swooped in, “Like _who_ , Moony? A certain dyed blond heiress?”

Remus glared at James but his flush rendered it ineffective.

Sirius walked past the two to open the bay window. It was no fun teasing Moony because the chap was resigned to be teased, unlike Prongs’ ready indignation. The view from the Gryffindor tower was ace. Their room faced outwards towards the Forbidden Forest, and the window was filled with bright, still full bushes of foliage that were tinted gold and red, almost close enough to reach out and shake them all loose. A small portion of the paved stone path on the grounds could be seen, and occasionally a student or a small wildlife would jump into the picturesque still life of the window.

Speak of the devil, there she was: the blond head of Arlene Day strolling down the path.

Sirius pulled out his hand from inside his pocket and put two fingers together and gave a long, oscillating whistle. She looked up, a slim hand shielding her eyes from the bruising rays of the sunset. When she saw who it was, she grinned widely and flipped the bird at him. Sirius laughed and beckoned for Remus. “Arlene,” he said, tilting his head to the outside.

Remus shook his head and retreated for a refill.

“Do you have a date to the Ball?” Sirius yelled down at her.

She gestured to convey that she couldn’t hear.

Before Sirius could repeat, Remus dragged him back, waved at her, and closed the window.

“You’re _never_ getting laid, old chap,” Sirius said gravely.

Remus looked at him darkly. James, the bastard, said, “Remember the last time you tried to be wingman?”

Sirius spluttered in outrage, “I am a _masterful_ wingman, that was a fluke!”

“She’s not going to the Ball anyway,” Remus said, “I heard her telling Anise.”

“She wants to be Prongs’ vis-à-vis to the Slugger dinner,” Sirius reminded him.

“I know,” Remus looked away, “but that’s a rather different scene.”

Sirius grunted his disagreement. Both were frivolous, stuffy events full of people peacocking for other useless people. He hated these things: balls, banquets, hunting parties,

“She wants to be elite,” Remus couldn’t help but defend her, “Smart course of action, targeting the elites picked out by Slughorn. It’s very utilitarian of her, instead of being part of Novia’s pink Disney princess delusion, or even Larka’s—well, I’m not sure what sort of delusion she holds, but obviously she does.”

“Larka couldn’t possibly figure herself to be a unicorn riding, rainbow farting princess,” Sirius said perhaps unkindly. He hadn’t had a fag in hours because Remus was so blasted adamant about no smoking in the library, and itching for a smoke always made him irritable. “Just look at her,” he continued as he reached for his trusty pack. “A lack of beauty is often a fatal wound! No perfect cupid’s bow for pressing a kiss, emerald green eyes more charming than any useless spell****, and a pearly voice like tolling bells of fate when she yells at you! Isn’t that right, Prongs my lad?”

James threw a shoe at Sirius, but it was a weak throw. Lily was indeed pretty: waste of a face on such a bird.

Remus gave that small, secretive smile of his that Sirius hated: it seemed to suggest that there was something blatant that he was missing. “The subjects of romanticized love poems often superficially sound gloriously, unearthly beautiful, but the subtext more often than not indicates a certain subjectivity, a wilful or even contrived bias. Besides, ‘what is beauty but the beginning of terror’?”

Ugh, Remus knew Sirius couldn’t stand it when he beat Sirius at being superficially erudite. Sirius popped his lighter and inhaled into his cigarette. Ahh.

“Doesn’t mean she’s _ugly_ ,” Sirius said after a few puffs. “Beauty is for the few. Besides, Larka seems to be a reasonable sort, she shouldn’t dream of the life of the beautiful. It’s not even necessarily a jolly good life. It’s nothing against her, really, but she just wasn’t born that way. I mean even her mother must admit that she isn’t quite the same as—oh what was her name, hmm, that cat-eyed, red-lipped bombshell that I dated in Fourth Year… ah! Scarlett! Oh, and that otherworldly bird with the most strikingly clear eyes, Claudia, who looked like she should be a Veela*****. Sybil wasn’t as pretty as the rest of them, but damn she had that frowning bitch look that was _fit_ , or at least was when I was fifteen. Hmm, Fourth Year was bit of a personal _annus mirabilis_ really; must be all the O.W.L.s stress.”

Remus just hummed noncommittally and gave that damned smile again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * A Muggle-born boy had hummed a distressingly catchy tune as they were trying to save the entire class. He later put his palm up to Kelso D. Meadowes, who high-fived him shyly and explained the concept of high-fiving to Larka Roxburgh and Novia Brooks. The boy had ruddy cheeks that matched Kelso’s in their redness, and despite his very round nose, Larka thought him and Kelso made a sweet picture. Then she realized that she was behaving like her mother, and decided to discourage all further thoughts of matchmaking. It was a slippery slope, descending into one’s parents’ flaws, Larka knew.
> 
> ** Yes, this was the Muggle-born boy in Transfiguration who hummed the James Bond theme song.
> 
> *** Larka J. Roxburgh was not the only one with trouble with specifics. Sirius A. Black also didn’t care enough to get the name of the Ball right, although he really thought the tradition was ace. He understood the importance of tradition, despite spending most of his life trying to break free of it. It did not take wearing a crest or inheriting a throne to inherit, but sometimes there were things larger than oneself, and nothing spoke more of that than tradition.
> 
> **** There was indeed, actually, a spell for enhancing the brightness of one’s eyes, popular with the ladies of the late Edwardian Period. It required little more than keeping a ritual candle burning on one’s hearth for a quart night and drawing the correct symbol around the base of the candle with ground cinnabarite (mercury sulphide). The effect was a candlelit glow on the caster’s face, beginning at dusk and lasting until the candle burned out. Maids of that period often were instructed with checking upon candles every quarter hour, in fear of the effect running out in the middle of almost securing a kiss or marriage proposal.
> 
> ***** Claudia Clamp had the clearest, most striking eyes ever to be found on a woman, and indeed had an eighth of Veela blood in her. It did not help her, however, when Sirius got bored of her grooming her hair, her favorite and perhaps only pastime. It was not her fault, however, as Sirius never got around to discovering her secret collection of poetry. Feasting on heartache, Claudia completed the first collection that she sent to a publisher under a nom de plume, beginning her career as a much-lauded and yet mysterious poet.


	6. As You Wish, Buttercup

**Chapter** **4**

**As You Wish, Buttercup**

The day of the Ball truly was a nightmare for the professors. Despite what usual fear McGonagall stroke in the hearts of the young, on this day even she was quite powerless. The students, empowered, made no attempt to even hide their inattention, escalating from passing notes (as per a normal day) to outright grouping together like a nest of birds, sticking their heads together and fervently whispering. The logical course of action was to admit defeat, which the professors graciously did (with the exception of Professor Binns, who was not to be fazed by dying, let alone a few chatty students).

And for Larka, oh for Larka the day passed in a blur of ‘what if’s. What if somebody was allergic to the plastic roses? What if somebody thought roses lazy and crude? What if the curtains caught on fire? What if one of the windows got smashed and let in rain, or hail, or a hurricane, or ruthless invading alien races conquering this world via a portal? What if the elves made the cakes too chocolate (could there be such a thing)? What if somebody (Sirius) spiked the punch (scratch that, he definitely would; she needed to double the ‘security’, i.e. some seniors Lily had bullied into chaperoning the food and beverages table)? A hundred—a thousand worst-case scenarios buzzed around Larka’s mind like an upset beehive.

If it wasn’t for Novia, she wouldn’t have remembered to change, and therefore would be forced to dig a dark hole underground and live a hermit’s life. Novia even did her makeup. Larka liked the concept of making oneself prettier, and were attracted to the shiny cases and intricate designs, but she had never been an artsy person and had a (Novia said irrational) fear of poking her eyes. She sat absolutely still, her heart quivering whenever something came close to her eyes, and waited. When she opened her eyes, Novia shoved her in front of a mirror, and she rather liked the effects. Her eyes were larger and brighter, more golden and less brown; her nose, which she had always liked, stood centre and highlighted; her round cheeks were dusted a rosy coral, redder than hers usually were; her lips were lined in a burnt red (all the lipsticks Novia owned were unflinching reds, and this was the least bold). She still looked like herself, but well, more than herself.

“You’re really good at this,” Larka said in awe.

“Of course,” Novia beamed, “ _And_ you’re a natural beauty. You’ll get to the hall alright? I have to go do Kelso now. You sure you don’t want me to curl your hair?”

“Yes quite, it gets itchy against my face when you do that.” Larka looked at the time. “Shouldn’t you get ready as well?”

“Oh psh,” Novia waved her off, “It only takes me an hour to get ready. And besides, you know I have to make Sirius wait at least fifteen minutes.”

Larka knew the theory behind it: a power-struggle between two engaged parties in hopes of dominating and taming the other. It seemed to her rather inconsistent with the whole concept of being together, but she deferred to Novia’s expertise. It always went like this in the films as well, and if all the films show the same thing, it must have some merit.

She had other things to worry about, so Larka tugged on her evening dress (it had glittered beckoningly from the store window, gold thread woven into the pewter blue organza, and she had bought it like a magpie; a solid investment it turned to be, since she could wear it every year; a faux pas, certainly, but she had always ranked low on the memorability scale so thank goodness for small miracles). After adjusting the once-tailored gown, she hurried to the hall.

Well, at least the curtains weren’t on fire, Larka thought optimistically as she beheld the sight before her. The hall had been set up to elven perfection, with each silver goblet in place, but the snacks were being attacked by a ferocious Sirius at the moment, and Lily had somehow grabbed onto a cup of wine and sent the liquid flying into James’ carefully spiked hair. James spluttered and stood looking shocked as the dark wine dripped down his face onto his dress robe, making little puddles on the floor. It wasn’t the hair that Larka worried about, though, but the stains on the ground. Wine was so hard to get out.

“What?” James said defensively when Larka scooted closer with a bundle of napkins, “I didn’t say anything!”

Lily huffed and cast a superb charm that erased all trace of wine from the ground (Larka _must_ get her to teach her that spell). “Hullo Larka,” she said, still a little out of breath, no doubt from trying to keep regular breathing patterns, “Nice dress. I’m off to change. I checked the halls just now, and _before_ _Potter_ , everything seems to be in order.”

“Great,” Larka replied with a shaky smile. Lily was still in a drawstring dress that looked to be made from butcher’s paper. “Go get ready, I’ll take over.”

“Thanks,” Lily gave her an exceedingly grateful look and dashed off with impressive speed.

“Okay, maybe I said something about her date,” James admitted to nobody in particular, his right hand going up and wipe his face. “And her long gloves, a little passé. And the choice of wine.”

Lily was not pureblood like James: to her, long white gloves were what constituted white tie raiment. It was a common enough misconception, Larka knew, but obviously James did not. Even given that though, he _did_ know that Lily had handpicked the wine from a long list of options. Larka, torn between giving him a reproachful or sympathetic look, ended up looking a little cross-eyed.

“But I honestly was trying to compliment how well she _and_ this place look,” James complained, throwing his hand into his hair out of frustration. “How is it that I always manage to say the wrong thing?”

“By trying too hard to say the right thing,” Larka said.

James peered at her, “You don’t make sense, you know.”

Larka shrugged, “And you don’t to me.”

James seemed to consider that until he stretched his palm out in a handshake, “I respect our impasse.”

Larka took his hand without a word. Like she said, he didn’t make sense to her. “Where are Remus and Peter?”

“Remus isn’t feeling well and Peter is frantically trying to transfigure his old robe into a size larger or himself into a size smaller,” Sirius responded with a mouthful of rum canelé. Larka hoped he didn’t finish them all; she was looking forward to those specifically. “Ergo, I suspect we will see Peter later with one of my older robes that he ‘borrowed’. Probably the teal one, Pete’s awfully fond of bright teal for some reason. Unfortunate.”

“Aren’t yours a bit too long?” It was good that Sirius was in black, not plum though: the contrast to his paleness made him look to be carved out of creamy white jade, like that Chinese pendant that she saw in the V&A museum when her family visited London for Mum’s birthday—or at least very good alabaster. Sirius always looked good in dark clothes, it made his pupils darker and his lips redder. Novia would be very pleased.

“Peter is a _master_ hemmer,” Sirius said solemnly, “Do not doubt his abilities with pins.”

“You’re disappointed that Remus isn’t here?” James wagged his eyebrows, recovering resiliently from his gloom a minute ago.

“Yes,” Larka said, “of course. He’s the only thing that prevents you two from spontaneous arson and or combustion.”

“The lady has a point,” Sirius said, thankfully having moved on to mooncakes by now.

James said “Eh” that displayed his utter lack of care towards fire perfectly. “I’m going back; need to make sure Lily isn’t devoured by her date. And probably pick up my own date.”

“And change,” Sirius suggested helpfully.

Larka examined the food platters and was surprised to see Sirius had rearranged the pastries so that there were no gaping holes. She was even briefly moved by the considerate gesture, until Sirius flashed her a cheeky grin and popped another canelé*. He must be doing it on purpose.

“Some wine, _mia principessa_?” he said.

Larka didn’t speak Italian, but she gathered what Sirius meant, “Do you call every girl a princess?”

“Of course, isn’t every girl one?” Sirius passed her a goblet.

Larka nodded, “Oh yes, I suppose that’s quite right of you.” She took a sip: it was lovely, sweet and bright; she didn’t know what James was whining about. She briefly thought about her unintended pun.

“Didn’t think you’d come in the full formalwear,” he said, eyeing her cat’s eye stone necklace and crystal minaudière.

“Why not?” Then quickly she said, “Oh, right, I see, I usually don’t wear jewellery. I do own this though. I guess now you know.” Mum had bequeathed a matching set of jewellery to her, saying it wasn’t a proper event unless it’s white tie. Her necklace was shiny and pretty, a large deep navy cat’s eye that glinted ferociously in a cross; it was nearly a hundred carats, but a part of it was slightly cloudy and was set to small diamonds, so it didn’t cost as much. Larka loved it tremendously though.

Sirius barked a laugh, “No, I just thought you weren’t into frivolity.”

“How is wearing a necklace frivolous? And,” Larka frowned, “what’s wrong with being frivolous?”

Sirius looked at her curiously, “So you’re not against dressing up? Playing pretty? Display of dazzling feminine assets?”

“Should I be?”

Sirius shrugged, “You seem like the type who scoffs at ladylike swooning and dolling up.”

Larka didn’t know where he got the impression from. “I try not to scoff at anything, and definitely not that. I like pretty things as well as anybody, and actually I find dressing up impressive: it takes earnestness towards everyday life. But I don’t try to _convey_ anything by the way I dress, not like Lily. Which is also impressive, you know, her taking a stance on the female role and societal boundaries just by _clothes_. I just try to look normal, which is hard to be defined to begin with, so I sometimes worry if I got the definition right. But mostly trousers are so much easier to fit under a robe.”

“Huh,” was all Sirius gave. Perhaps he was bored? She certainly gushed on quite a bit about nothing, but she was wont to do that when relaxed. And as strange as it sounded, right before such a large event of which _she was responsible for_ , she was relaxed. She took another sip of the wine. It tastes drier after her bite of the canelé (he was a bad influence, she had started eating as well), but not unpleasantly so. She decided to refill her goblet, and with wine came amicable conversation about nothing.

She discovered that last summer he had tickets for The Pulp—a band that they both adored (although Sirius divulged that his favour was mercurial)—but he could not go, and they lamented over that. Larka was alarmed to hear that occasionally he felt the urge to jump off his broomstick during Quidditch matches, but instead took refuge in heedless romps in the mud pit. He confessed that he had a somewhat embarrassing difficulty in remember people’s names, and she guiltily admitted to the practice of buying selections of books but never getting around to reading them. She shared her Christmas plans with him, and he said that he would be visiting California instead of seeing his family and he was looking forward to the holidays for once.

Sirius was hesitant to talk about his own family, so naturally Larka offered him details about hers, telling him how her father always smelt like strawberry pipes and had half-joking aspirations to be a poet after he retired from his editing job. How her mother had a spectacular memory for distant relatives and their quirks but could not ever remember where she put down the keys. How they had a dog once, when she was young, a large and lazy Bernese Mountain Dog who never learnt the command to _not_ lick people’s faces, whose fur was her naptime spot and how there could be no other dog after him, and the tantrum she threw when Mum suggested a replacement. How she had almost had a younger brother but that was a tragedy trimmed and put away in a drawer somewhere. How they never got a Christmas tree for the holidays because her father insisted that he was allergic to pine moulds and how her grandmother knit the lumpiest, largest socks to hang by the inoperable fireplace. How her mother pretended to like Bowie and ABBA because she tried to be hip but drew the line at The Sex Pistols’ scandalous name. All the talk made her miss home an awful lot, and she thought that Sirius looked wistful about home as well, although for his or her home, she could not say.

“I’d better get back to Gryffindor as well,” Sirius said eventually.

The Ball was about to officially start. Larka just noticed that about a dozen people already trickled in and were now nervously huddling together as if trying to protect themselves from being so punctual. As long as they weren’t striking up trouble, it didn’t matter to Larka, although they were taking fugitive glances at her, which was a little worrying.

“Er, Novia will be a little late,” Larka warned him.

“I expect no less,” Sirius ran a hand through his hair to slick it back, “Might as well go now and wait though; it’s the whole package.” Seeing Larka’s face, he chuckled, “Her being late wouldn’t mean anything if I’m not waiting.”

“Oh I see,” Larka said, although she didn’t.

Sirius shook his head. “You’ll see one day.”

To tell the truth, Larka was a little sad to see him go. Sirius was always entertaining in small doses, especially without James and Lily bickering on the side. Nevertheless, it was more important to have him waiting, if that was what made Novia happy.

The opening score drew to a close, the enchanting violin now replaced by popular songs performed by a jazz pub band that Headmaster Dumbledore had commissioned.

Larka enjoyed the Ball more than she thought she would have. Novia had insisted that Larka would be simply miserable unless Larka found a date to the event, since both Kelso and Novia would be occupied, but Larka brushed it aside. Some poor fellow from Hufflepuff had asked her to accompany him, but she was taller than him by two whole inches (he would see an overdue growth spurt soon, she hoped for him). Larka was not one to discriminate by height, but she knew of how others would have jested the boy. Jesting was often torturous to the sensitive soul, so she declined for his sake as well.

Remus did show up for half a second, to check in on the event. Larka informed him that all was well, but they were accosted by a girl who wanted a dance with Remus. Remus, his voice uncharacteristically betraying a hint of his Welsh heritage, said that he was getting some tea but would return shortly** and slipped away. Larka noticed that his face was pale and his fingers trembled, although she did not know why a mere dance scared the normally composed Remus so, but he would undoubtedly feel better once he got tea. She took the opportunity to check if the beverages needed restocking, but did not see Remus.

James returned in a fresh dress robe of the exact same shade of Persian plum, with a pretty, shiny-haired girl in a form-fitting bodice and flared out full skirt full of pale green and puce floral glittery attachments (sequins? but they were much larger than sequins). Larka liked the dress very much. And her heels. And her hair. Arlene Day looked too put-together to not know about James’s very public and longstanding pursuit of Lily. She probably knew what she was doing.

Peter passed by but didn’t greet her.

Lily was chatting with her date very animatedly. Lily was unconventional in a fawn-coloured wide-legged pantsuit ensemble; and it was _cotton_ , Larka realized with awe. She also forwent the white gloves. From Larka’s vantage, she mulled as she bid into a plum schneeball, Lily intermittently looked around and only stopped when she hit James. Which was interesting. James was oblivious to that as per usual, but instead was allowing his shiny-haired date to fight his hair with small charms and, failing, with hair gel that he produced from a hidden pocket. The girl had some skill with pomade and prevented James from turning into a coal porcupine. (Hmm, that sounded like something found in one of Lang’s coloured books.)

After a round of inspection, Larka contently returned to the hors d'oeuvre table. Kelso came by to say hullo, in her best rose gold gown that brought out her rosy cheeks and bright red hair. It was a good colour on Kelso, and more sparkly than anything else she ever wore; Larka had helped pick it out with her, and she knew that Kelso secretly liked sequins very much, but did not have the courage to wear it for everyday purposes.

The star of tonight’s show arrived, more than an hour into the event, after Larka had replenished the hors d’oeuvres and averted a crisis with the acoustic charms (how could Derek forget renewing the charms after forty-three minutes?). Novia, arm linked with Sirius, glided into the hall in a crystal embellished, full-skirted ruby satin gown that looked like it was sown with stars and a smile that outshone the sun. They had their first dance in the very centre of the room to a lovely song. Larka debated whether she should take one or two more canelé.

Larka assured Lily that all was well when she floated to her table, and then chatted briefly with her date when Lily made off to the loo. Ryan Garland and she discussed coursework, found that they had not one class in common, and resorted to learning about each other’s, although neither was truly interested. After Lily came back to rescue Ryan (or Larka), Larka then danced with a boy from Ravenclaw. Colin, she believed his name was, a year her senior. He was one of the few who came on time and throughout the dance seemed to be on the verge of asking her something. Larka patiently waited for him to ask, but he never did. It was a lovely dance, set to an upbeat song that she didn’t recognize, and Larka thanked him after it ended. Another boy in a uniquely sage-coloured robe (somebody called him Chester) also asked her to dance. He was a much more practiced dancer although lousy conversationalist; Larka enjoyed herself until his date came to gather him. Then a song repeated itself, and Larka went to discover the bass had misplaced his sheets so they were now just reusing earlier songs, which was of course unacceptable. Larka rushed back and forth until she found Garnet Montgomery, who said she had some sheets in her room of germane songs. Exhausted from dealing with this emergency, Larka retreated to the edge of the hall. Larka drew open the window to reveal the nightscape. The liberated rectangle let in the outside world through a sliver, the wind blowing inside and making soft, whistling noises between the glass. Larka stared outside: from here, she could see the edge of the Forbidden Forest from here, dark and apocalyptic, and Larka was both afraid of it and wanted to see more.

“It’s an ace party,” Kelso found her here and complimented her.

Larka said happily, “You think so? It does seem that people are enjoying themselves.” The food and beverages was not in lacking, the music was nice but not too loud, the temperature slightly chilly when standing but perfect when dancing, the punch was _not_ spiked, and there was minimal drama. But don’t jinx it, Larka.

“I think almost everybody we know is here,” Kelso said, joining her in leaning against the windowsill.

Larka cast a quick glance over the crowd, “Hmm, I think so, except Remus, who isn’t feeling well.”

“Isn’t he?”

“Unfortunately. He did look quite pale.”

“Perhaps we should check on him?” Kelso asked.

Larka was surprised, although she didn’t know why she was. She thought about it a little and said, “I’m sure he’s fine, James and Sirius don’t seem worried.” They weren’t on _that_ familiar terms, were they?

“Well,” Kelso looked a little thoughtful until she smiled and said, “speaking of whom, lovely how Sirius makes Novia so happy.”

At which, as if they could hear the gossiping, the happy couple came over to join them.

“Larka,” Novia demanded, “you’ve been hiding again!”

“I’ve danced twice,” Larka reported proudly, “with different boys as well.”

Novia sighed dramatically, “It’s a nice, slow song, let’s find you a nice, slow dance partner.”

“Please don’t. I promise that,” Larka said jokingly, “the moment I see a boy that I like, I will swoop in and pounce upon him before he notices my shadow.”

Sirius chuckled, “I must admit, I like the imagery. Although more likely than not to feast upon him instead,” he looked pointedly at the crumbs on her plate.

“Oh Larka,” Novia clucked, “I would need to stuff you with a whole pitcher of beer*** first.”

A piece of wind made the curtains sigh nearby in a soft ‘ _shh_ ’. “It is,” Sirius remarked offhandedly, “too dark and gorgeous for seducing unsuspecting chaps though.”

Larka nodded, “Well, yes, it is night.”

“It’s a spectacular view,” Novia agreed.

“Although a bit drafty,” Kelso added.

“I like the forest at night,” Sirius said, less of a conversation starter than accidently spilling some inner thought (in a fit of madness induced by the moon surely, for since when did Sirius Black explain himself to anyone?).

That caught Larka by surprise. Sirius frequently and loudly denounced all things associated with his Black lineage in public, and she had thought that to include the literal association of the darkness. It was also strange, she thought, to see Sirius admitting to a simple, straightforward idea, as if he was capable of being simple and straightforward; as if—well, as if he was just like her. She turned to peer out the window: the woods ran patches of lighter and deeper black, starting at the border of their campus until it gave away to the lakeshore. As picturesque as the outside look, Larka knew it was in reality anything but. The woods were dense and wild and frequently heavy mists rose and swallowed everything. Though she could admit that yes, it was curiously deep and looked like somebody spilled ink all over the landscape, hiding all the unsavoury bits and leaving a beautifully mottled darkness.

“It’s very intriguing,” Novia said, “moonlight and centaurs, Daphne running in the woods and Pan playing his flute.”

Sirius gave his signature grin. “Oh yes, James, Remus, and I, we run in it all the time—and me telling you is part of posing blasé and unconventional, of course,” he smirked at them.

Larka did not take his words at face value. There was something so thoughtfully deceptive about his smirk. It felt like there was a double layer of self-awareness buried in his admission.

Novia huffed with great character, “It’s no pose; you’re definitely unconventional at least.”

“You like strange things,” Larka said.

Sirius grinned, “Why thank you. See there?” he yanked open the window further and pointed out. Something flickered in the distance. “ _There_ ,” following his finger, Larka saw the elusive spot where the silvery tip of the Giant Squid**** could be seen, a floating light amid the darkness.

“Oh!” Novia exclaimed in glee, “What is that?”

“The Giant Squid,” Sirius smirked, “Even the foulest monster has its moments, no?”

“Oh,” Novia squirmed the same time as Larka asked, “Why do you call it a monster?”

Sirius raised his eyebrows in response.

“Isn’t it one? Didn’t Binns have a lesson on the history of the Squid once?” Kelso asked.

“But it’s just larger than the usual squid,” Larka said reasonably.

“And that doesn’t make it a monster?” Sirius asked.

Larka shrugged, “What is a monster anyway,” she said philosophically, “Besides, it’s not like it has hurt anybody, right?”

“Hmm,” Sirius said noncommittally, still staring out of the window, expression oddly neutral.

“I had an unpleasant experience with squids at the beach when I was young,” Novia said.

Larka remembered, “That time on Dover beach?”

Novia nodded, “Although I’m sure the Giant Squid is more peaceful.”

Larka shrugged, “It’s still a squid, like any other squid.”

“Speaking of squids,” Novia said, a gleam in her eyes that Larka did not like, “where’s Remus, I haven’t seen him tonight?”

Remus had nothing to do with squids. Larka knew that Novia had this notion in her head that Larka should be dating Remus when Novia dated Sirius. Novia had wanted to assign Kelso to Peter—they were both pudgy and adorable!—but Kelso had frowned at the suggestion; no matter, it was a jigsaw waiting to be placed.

“Hospital Wing—he’s got a fever.”

“Poor thing,” Novia said.

“Maybe we ought to bring some chocolate cake to him,” Kelso suggested.

“Nah,” Sirius said, “he probably has the elves serving him there as well. When Madam Pomfrey isn’t looking of course,” he winked.

“Larka, why don’t you check on him there? It’s awful that he’s missing the do he helped plan,” Novia suggested.

Kelso nodded, “I’ll come with you, Larka, these little cakes are—”

“He doesn’t like cakes,” Sirius interposed. Larka suspected he was lying, since she saw Remus sneakily hiding three chocolate ones in a napkin.

Kelso blushed.

Larka thought about Remus’s atypical paleness and decided, “I can’t help him get better, so no point in me visiting. If he’s seriously ill no doubt these chaps,” Larka tilted her head to indicate Sirius, “won’t be here drinking so glibly.” Larka usually went along with whatever Novia wanted, and seeing Remus wouldn’t be the worst thing, but she honestly didn’t think she should disturb Remus if he was already feeling ill.

“Humph,” Novia rolled her eyes. “Fine, Kelso, let’s go to the girls’ room,” she pulled on Kelso’s hand, dragging the flustered Kelso away with a pout, accidentally or deliberately bumping against Sirius’s shoulder. 

“Why do girls insist on going to the loo together?” Sirius said as they watched the girls weave through the crowd, thinning as people left for the after party, one in an empty classroom in the dungeons and another in Ravenclaw’s common room.

“To talk about present company.” Larka wondered which one Sirius was going to.

Sirius tipped his goblet into his mouth until it was empty. Squinting at the dry bottom as if willing it to refill itself, he said, “People say different things, which is far more interesting than the answer itself.”

Larka was curious, “What are the other answers?”

“Powder, afraid of the dark, fear of me preying on the poor dear otherwise, a lady must have her secrets, et cetera, et cetera.”

All valid reasons. Larka instead asked, “Find Novia to your taste?”

Sirius fished out a flask and started drinking from that. “Haven’t quite gotten there yet,” he replied with an easy smirk.

Larka was determined to be befuddled when he had that lewd look.

Seeing her lack of response, Sirius shrugged and walked to her side, giving an uncharacteristically proper answer now. “She’s not puffed up like the act she puts on or an old hand, although _such_ a poseur; but nothing like what people say, really.”

“You of all people should know how rumours work,” Larka said, “Novia is the sort of girl who assumes a fierce front, but is really just soft and squishy inside.” It seems like Sirius has Novia all figured out. She could probably gladly look forward to an engagement in a year or two.

“You think?” he asked curiously.

She was unsure what he was asking all of a sudden. “Yeah,” she answered still. She could see Lily commanding the clean-up at the centre of the ballroom, but the elves at Hogwarts didn’t need instructions. They had lived through generations of raucous, littering students. She should probably still go aid them, but for some reason she didn’t.

“Firewhiskey?” he offered his flask.

“No thanks,” she said politely.

Sirius followed her line of sight to Lily. “There’s smart and too smart. Evans is one of those who’s too smart to figure themselves out.”

“Isn’t that just not smart enough?”

“Nope. She thinks too much, too much Apollonian and not enough Dionysian, formal, repressed, will never be happy.”

“That’s unfair,” Larka said, “you can’t say just because she’s not prone to hysterics and frenzied dancing that she’s not happy.”

“Is anybody?” Sirius asked rhetorically.

“Well,” Larka said, “yes, I know plenty of happy people.”

“Tsk, like yourself, I imagine you’ll say?”

“Well, yes,” she said again, “like me.”

Sirius looked at her funnily and frowning, opened his mouth to say something, but Novia and Kelso came back now. Sirius closed his mouth almost petulantly and turned to kiss Novia’s moonlit shoulders.

“Sorry, I think I’ll head back,” Larka told them, eager to leave all of a sudden.

“Me too,” Kelso said.

They left the lovebirds to wax romantics at the moon, and then later parted with minimal words in the corridors. Larka returned to her room. The wine had made her tired and sleep overcame her immediately.

-.-.-.-.-

Moony was right (as always), Sirius decided, birds _weren’t_ all the same: some were naïve to the point of stupidity. His date thought she was the first to play him like a harp; the fat one thought nobody noticed how eager she was to visit old Moony; and Larka, clueless Larka, whose life hitherto had been so sweet to her that she would think, like a five year old, that it was all a fairy tale with happiness abounded.

Sirius scoffed as he expended the last drop of his peaty scotch. James had definitely gone to the Ravenclaw party, since Evans’ friends were all there, but he didn’t feel up for it, so he turned down his date’s offer and bid her adieu.

Life was never happy or gracious; one had to battle it at every turn. He already knew that when _he_ was five.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * The rum canelé was a specialty of Yiddy, head cook of the Hogwarts housekeeping staff. She had the recipe from serving the Greengrass household in her younger days, a mere kitchen maid under the tight rule of the former Madam Greengrass, may long live her ghost, Yiddy shuddered as she thought of the stern-faced matriarch who still haunted the gardens occasionally, criticizing the gardener elves. After Lily so flatly shot down Larka’s hopes of having banana bread for the event (not a hors d'oeuvres, Lily had said), Larka had asked Lily to ask Yiddy to serve rum canelé. Lily had then asked Remus, being unused to making requests to the kitchen. Remus had then told Sirius to go charm Yiddy, who, like almost all the non-human population of Hogwarts, had a soft spot for the black-haired grinning boy.
> 
> ** In fact, Remus J. Lupin never returned with tea: it was only a thinly veiled excuse he never intended to fulfil. If he hadn’t been so ill due to the moon, he might have been more polite with his refusal, but alas. Also, the situation was faintly was reminiscent of a time when he foolishly agreed to dancing, and upon returning to his drink, ended up with wine spiked with ridiculously strong anisette liquor. He had been young enough not to recognize the peculiar taste, and had gone about his marauding ways with the rest of his marauding crew. The next morning, he had found that a certain set of ancient and clawed manuscripts lost their curved horns due to the acidity of vomit.
> 
> *** Larka J. Roxburgh suffered an incident involving a pint of beer and a boy in her Second Year. She had gotten drunk off of a small portion of alcohol passed to her by Novia Brooks, whose friendship she was keen to strengthen after the long stretch of summer. In her eagerness to be a good sport, Larka had downed the drink a bit too quickly for her twelve year old body mass, and soon was beet red and had begun hiccupping very distressingly. It was not a pleasant memory, not helped in the least that her mouth tasted furry the next day, and Novia had yet to understand the cruelty of sunlight and noise to a hangover.
> 
> **** The Giant Squid happened to be rather friendly to Sirius Altair Black, and he was actually waving to the boy—else he would not have been glowing visibly, and instead nestled deep in the blackened waters. The Squid had a soft spot for troublesome boys who threw rocks into the lake, for the little bitsy mermaids would fight amongst themselves to catch the stones, and the Squid liked a catfight as much as the next male specimen.


	7. The Art of Cauterization

**Chapter** **5**

**The Art of Cauterization**

It happened on a fine Saturday afternoon.

Christmas flew over in a blur of happiness for Princess Novia at her most radiant. All her days went swimmingly well. If ever there was anything less than perfect, just one thought of Sirius took all worries away, even though he was thousands of kilometres away across the ocean on a trip with his mates.

The second weekend after coming back to school was a sun-kissed, if still wintry day, the sort perfect for cuddling and hot chocolate. Novia didn’t expect Sirius —a boy and therefore insensitive to romantics—to show initiation, so she invited him out for some hot chocolate, cuddling implied.

Sirius never made the firsts move, frequently changed plans at the last second, and just didn’t show up sometimes, offering only an offhand excuse later if Novia pressed for it. Novia didn’t give it too much thought: so what Sirius played the dating game a little too hard? Novia knew that she was beautiful: she had the sort of oval face, high nose, and deeply set eyes that transcended aesthetic fads. She would be called beautiful in any age. Her father gave her the fair skin that was sought by wizardkind, and her mother taught her to take care of her even fairer hair so that it appeared lightly sun-kissed, not sallow. And while she could be wilful and sometimes had strong moods, Sirius was incredibly capricious himself, and given his past record, it appeared he was attracted to beautiful, wilful girls . Novia knew that she was just his type. Besides, she had presented herself with all the necessary qualities of the perfect girlfriend. It was only time until Sirius would be more passionately in love with her—or at least the idea of her, which was fine with Novia.

Sirius’s mutt of an owl had come back, two hours later, with one word, “Sure.”

Novia put on her oversized red sweater that looked incredibly homey and huggable, but with a swooping neckline that perfectly showcased her collarbone, tucking into a high-waist pair of jeans that hugged her backside and showed just the right amount of slender ankles. Then she went off with a promise of a bar of ginger chocolate for Larka.

Larka was on her bed with _Howards End_ (Mary had just decided that the past needs to be the past with a bravery that fills Larka with both admiration and trepidation) when Novia returned two hours later.

“The _bastard_ ,” Novia fumed, slamming the door shut with vehemence, making the entire architecture quake. “That twat, arsehole, bloody damned stupid _fuck_. _Ugh_. That rascal, that, that…”

“Scoundrel?” Larka offered supportively.

Novia shot her a dark look before going to her bed. Oh dear, it was quite serious if she upended the bedding again. Novia really liked this set of floral fabric; she had even refrained from tearing it apart when her mum said they couldn’t go to Italy during the summer anymore.

“Did you get in a fight with Sirius?” Larka came to the logical conclusion.

“Don’t ever even _mention_ his bloody name _near_ me!” Novia shrieked.

“I can do that,” Larka assured.

For a minute, Novia stared at her, arms stretched out as if hold something back, hair tangled and jumper awry, eyes blazing and ready to snarl out something. Larka met her gaze calmly. She had learnt how to deal with outbursts like these, which happened violently if infrequently. Her back was protesting as she looked up at Novia in this position; Larka hadn’t moved since Novia burst in, still frozen lying on her stomach on the bed, _Howards End_ splayed out in front of her.

Then suddenly, Novia deflated. Unable to bear the sight of the serene Larka, Novia averted her eyes and said, “Leave me alone.”

Larka gathered her book and left the room. Before she left, she said, “I’ll be in the Common Room. I’ll come get you for dinner?”

With Novia’s nod, Larka stepped out and closed the door quietly behind her. The poor door, to see so much abuse year after year.

In the Common Room sat Sirius, taking up an entire récamier chaise longue by himself, stretching comfortably on the cushions (or however comfortable one could be in Muggle denim, the stiff material that Larka didn’t like), feet propped up unbecomingly and arms crossed under his head.

Larka frowned, hesitated for but a moment before approaching the boy. They hadn’t talked since the Ball, and there were so many _people_ in the room, but Larka had to, “Did you follow Novia back?”

“Huh?” he looked up at her, attention no longer on James and Remus duelling it out in wizard’s chess and Peter mumbling over some parchment, “No, why would I do that?”

“Because she’s awfully upset,” Larka said.

“Oh,” Sirius said. And then, since Larka was obviously waiting for something else, he shrugged into the couch and said, “So?”

Larka blinked, “So what happened?”

“Nothing,” Sirius said candidly, or at least to the effect of candidness, “We went on a walk, like she wanted. She insisted on getting chocolates or something.”

That did sound like Novia: she probably wanted a cup of hot chocolate, with an extra stick of cinnamon.

“Then she blabbed on about matching outfits, the ridiculous woman. My wild and revolutionary sartorial senses are not to be matched or replicated!”

Larka looked at Sirius, in frayed jeans and a red, ratty tee (it said AC/DC with a lightning bolt; Larka assumed it was a band given the featured guitar) and a crumpled leather jacket. She didn’t have enough expertise to say for sure if the fashion industry counted that as ‘matching’, but to her untrained eyes, well, jeans were jeans and red was red.

As if reading her mind, Sirius said in outrage, “These are _Balmain_!”

The root of the problem couldn’t be matching outfits—nobody was that ridiculous, not even Sirius. “What’s wrong with matching your girlfriend?

“Girlfriend?” Sirius seemed bewildered, which bewildered Larka.

“Novia, of course,” she said, a knot of uncomfortable misgiving beginning to swell in her stomach.

Sirius made a disgusted sound. “I don’t know what she’s been telling you,” he said hotly, “but she’s _not_ my girlfriend. And before you start, she _wasn’t_ my girlfriend _before_ this farce either.” He gave a carefully sculptured scowl. “Look, she asked me to the Ball, so I went. She asked me to go on _walks_ or join in with whatever, so I did, _ex gratia_. I don’t know what more you people want from me. I’m not some _thing_ you can take out for a spin and then just decide to _keep_.”

To say that Larka was surprised would be an understatement. “But I thought—”

“Clearly not _thought_ , since that requires thinking,” Sirius snorted.

Larka ignored that, “If she’s not your girlfriend, or if you don’t want her to be, then why agree to any of it at all?”

Sirius shrugged again, “She asked.”

It didn’t matter, Larka decided, why he agreed or what sort of twisted logic this was, the important thing was: “So do you like her? Romantically?”

“No,” Sirius rejected flatly.

“At all?” Larka inquired with the last cooling embers of hope.

“ _No_ ,” Sirius said forcefully.

“Well then,” Larka encapsulated eloquently. She needed to find some place to think, away from any and all living, breathing human beings, preferably all life forms**.

-.-.-.-

“Well?” Remus said, approaching from his inevitable victory at smashing all of James’s chess pieces to smithereens. Remus’s set always had such a flair for unnecessary violence; Sirius had a theory that it was a signal of repressed sexuality. It would probably help if Remus could just get up from his arse and nail Arlene. Remus obviously thought she hung the moon; Merlin knew the both of them needed a good rump.

“Hmm?” Sirius made the effort to say.

“Are you _ever_ going to get up from there?” James said, in a bad mood after being cleaned of all but four of his pieces, something of a record even for the chess-challenged James***.

“No,” Sirius declared, “I have a reputation to carefully uphold.”

“Reputation as a slovenly slug?” Remus asked.

“That of lethargic grace, of course,” Sirius stretched. His arms were starting to feel numb from pillowing his head for so long, but he was resolved to not move. At least until the pangs of hunger turned too great. Or someone brought up the topic of supper; he _was_ looking forward to roasted quails. He had asked Yiddy the head of kitchen for quails, venison, and Madeira wine. Perhaps he was going to get up soon after all.

James plopped down beside him. Well, half of James anyhow, since the récamier couldn’t fit the other half that draped over the edge like one of Dali’s clocks.

“It must be pretty bad if Larka came over to us and demanded what happened,” Remus deduced, towering over them. From this angle, Remus’s falling hair shadowed his eyes and he looked quite wicked. Bangs were good for something after all, Sirius thought as his fingers proudly went through his own slicked back locks.

“Eh,” Sirius said expressively.

“You should probably apologize to her later,” Remus said, vague on the pronoun, casually picking up the book that he had been fugitively reading**** before James invited him to chess by knocking everything off the table.

“Not my problem,” Sirius twirled his wrist.

“You heart-breaking scoundrel, you,” James joked, only slightly envious of Sirius’s luck with the ladies. At least James ought to be jealous, Sirius thought, considering James’s utter pantomime of a love life. There was enough angst for a whole volume of Cavafy.

“I much prefer the term ‘reprobate’,” Sirius drawled, “It feels much more exclusive. Anybody can be a scoundrel these days.”

“Padfoot,” Remus said sternly.

“What?” Sirius was beginning to get a little annoyed. “It’s not my fault that Novia got in over her head. Usually when birds ask me to be their date to something, I just get flaunted like some stuffed prize peacock for a night and that’s that. They hardly expect a whole flaming _thing_ out of it.”

“Padfoot,” Remus said sensibly, “you were together before practically every person in this whole school. And you never said no—like it or not, you led her on. Deliberately.”

Sirius hated it when Remus was being sensible because it was so hard to be flippant properly. “So?” It was her own damned fault for making him into some Prince fucking Charming. Even if he was, _she_ was no Snow White, Sirius thought maliciously.

“You’re being pig-headed,” Remus accused.

“It’s called being tenacious, a virtue, my dear Moony, and would you _mind_ the imagery, pigs are only good for roasting,” Sirius said. Actually he wouldn’t mind a roasted pig’s head—okay fine, he was getting off the bloody récamier soon. “Why are you on my back so much? What’s it to you that some bird has a fit?”

“Because Sirius,” Remus preached, “you can’t go on forever hurting people like this and not except any repercussion simply because you don’t think it’s your fault.”

“It’s _not_ my fault,” Sirius contended.

“That might or might not be true, but at the very least you could have been nice about it.”

“ _Nice_ ,” Sirius huffed, “Loads of bull. You know that the bird’s only interested in having the untameable ‘bad boy’ to hang on her arm. I never agreed to more than going as her date to the Ball and she didn’t even ask for more, just assumed it. Probably wants half of my property now that it’s a bleeding _divorce_.”

“I meant to Larka,” Remus said.

“ _She’s_ just as bad, if not worse.” Sirius had honestly expected more of her: if not an understanding of him, then at least less misunderstanding. “Astonishing stupidity.”

James clapped Sirius on the back; he tended to agree with him on the particular matter of antipathy for females.

Peter joined in, “It doesn’t matter what _they_ think anyway, Moony, we’ve always got each other.”

Sirius went on, not responding to his friends’ demonstrative gesture, “She thinks her friend is fit—and she _is_ —but she expects that because her friend is fit, I will _of course_ fall irrevocably, fatefully in love with her. I’ve seen my share of beautiful women, and all of them end up the same. When do I follow other people’s scheming? And _what_ is this? A picture book for a three-year-old?”

“Lily’s not the same,” James quibbled, “Her beauty is peerless.”

“Don’t be daft,” Sirius snorted. James was just masochistic to have latched onto the first person who openly despised and preached to him, like a twisted new-born chick, or a version of Stockholm syndrome. He just never had to _work_ for a bird before; nor had people criticise him, his entire family doted on him without reserve. When he realized his own bitterness he shook his head to dissipate such thoughts for his best mate. Instead, Sirius said, “ _Nothing_ happens to beauty alone."

"Of course not, Padfoot," Remus softened his tone. That angered Sirius even more: it was evident that Moony just didn’t want to argue that yes it did, all the time. Moony seemed to be expecting a further monologue anyway, and prepared for it.

Yet Sirius, defying expectations as always, leapt up from the chaise longue (pushing aside James) and briskly strode out, his jacket theatrically whispering froufrou in his dramatic exit.

James looked to Remus and Peter from the floor, supporting himself on an elbow, used to his best mate’s histrionics, and tipped his head after Sirius, as if to say, ‘ _Dinner_?’

Remus returned a suffering but indulgent smile, as if to say ‘ _Do we have a choice?_ ’

Peter clapped and stuffed his essay away eagerly, running ahead of Remus and James towards the Great Hall. He was such a fan of quails.

-.-.-.-

By the time Larka went to get Novia for dinner, Novia was more composed. Nothing could be gleaned from her demeanour that she had been furious and heartbroken a few hours ago. The state of the room, however…

Larka debated whether cleaning up the mess would provoke Novia—in the end, she decided that a mess never improved anybody’s mood, so she quickly cast a few repairing spells. Nothing major was broken; the room just looked bad because it was covered in broken stem bits and powdered rose petals, from the dried bouquet of red roses and a single blue one, which Sirius had given Novia on the eve of the Ball, and which Novia had lovingly hung up to dry in a string so as to preserve this declaration of love for all eternity. Only Novia’s belongings were damaged, so quickly tidying things up was manageable. Besides, sheets were easily sewn back together, although Larka always did a rather shoddy sewing job.

“Let’s go,” Novia said and Larka followed.

The strong aroma of food invaded the senses long before they reached the Great Hall: it smelled extra opulent today. Novia took her usual place at the far end of the Gryffindor table without a word and Larka sat down beside her. Kelso was already there, patiently waiting.

Now that Larka was closer and could examine Novia, she found faint traces of crying. Novia worked magic with her makeup, but inspection showed puffiness around the eyes and thin red vessels in her eyes. It seemed like Larka should say something, but Novia avoided all inquiring gazes and ate silently and swiftly.

Larka wavered between keeping quiet and trying to initiate some sort of conversation, perhaps a joke? But was it possible to make current heartache into a joke? Wasn’t that insensitive, despite originating from the best intentions? Besides, Novia obviously gave her preference, and Larka supposed that it was best to respect Novia’s own wishes. After all, how could she know better than Novia what Novia wanted? She tried to remember how Margaret had comforted her sister after her involvement with Bast, in order to emulate the remarkable honour and affection that Margaret exhibited.

Kelso also remained quiet, slipping into silence with familiarity. Kelso had been less sympathetic than Larka expected when Larka found the girl and told her of what happened earlier. Kelso had said it was inevitable, which Larka thought was strange. Still, no matter what Kelso’s views on the breakup was, her view on Novia’s clear suffering aligned with Larka’s, and that was what mattered.

They were three strange figures in the ever-boisterous hall, not a word spoken throughout dinner. The quails were superbly roasted, and the wine paired with the tender venison danced with complex and rich flavours on the tongue. Larka briefly wondered what the occasion was.

Halfway through dessert (a gooey lava cake, she had just gotten to the molten chocolate centre), Novia dropped her utensils and hastily got up. Larka and Kelso exchanged a look and went after Novia.

It wasn’t hard to hunt down Novia, her fair hair a striking sight to follow, making a straight beeline towards the nearest empty room.

“Emil,” was the first thing Novia said when Larka closed the door behind her gently. “he was, he said something about a blue ribbon.”

Larka and Kelso exchanged another look, this time in confusion.

“It reminded me of, of you know, the flowers he brought…” Novia trailed off.

Oh, right. The bouquet from the night of the Ball was tied with a blue ribbon. Such an association, as slight as it might have been, had overcome Novia and drove her into a paroxysm of weeping. Yet, Larka wringed her hands, even as anxious to be considerate as they were, it was impossible to stay away from every detail of the couple’s prior interactions. “I’m sorry, Novia,” Larka said, “we’ll try to be careful but… you will grow used to it.”

 “I don’t _want to_ ,” Novia burst into tears. “I don’t want to get over it, because if I do, that means I lost him for good!”

“Did he break it off?” Kelso asked, ripping the bloody bandage that Larka had been nursing so vigilantly.

Novia made an indignant noise and attempted to speak, but ended up producing mostly gibberish sounds as she tried to convey everything at once. Finally, she took a deep breath and said, “He brought his _mates_ on the date,” she spat out like it was a vile word, “but of course I laughed and said great, it’ll be a hoot. Then we went to that shoddy pub instead of Madam Puddifoot’s. The _pub_! Well whatever, I was a good sport and didn’t insist on getting hot chocolate; I even ordered the piss they call beer there and chugged that.”

So far, it actually sounded like a fairly typical date for them. Larka didn’t understand why Novia always did things she didn’t want to do (didn’t that defeat the purpose of being together, if one party always suffered?), but she was happy to do so.

“ _Then_ ,” Novia said through gritted teeth, looking impossibly angry and despairing at the same time, “he started flirting with the waitress, the _skank_.”

Kelso gasped.

“I _know_ ,” Novia said, “but I was like ha-ha you’re so funny all in good fun.”

“You could have called him out on it,” Larka said.

Novia rolled her eyes, “I didn’t want to be called a crazy bitch. Anyway, it didn’t bother me that much, pretty standard fare, but then he promised to snog the waitress for free drinks and I just… lost it. We had this awful fight and when I accused him of cheating he said that I’ve always just been a tag-along and we’ve never been _together_.”

“No!” Kelso cried with disbelief.

Larka was less prone to shock sine she had a first-hand account of Sirius’s attitude, but that did not lessen the rage she felt. This was so ugly and unfair. Even if he didn’t consider Novia his girlfriend, he should have treated her respectfully like a human being, not with humiliation and nastiness.

“But hadn’t he asked you to be girlfriend before this?” Kelso pressed, perhaps unwisely, or perhaps too wisely.

“Of course!” Novia said indignantly, “He all but said he _loves_ me! Well, at least,” Novia looked down, “he _practically_ said it. It was minutely implied. “You don’t just _kiss_ like that without _meaning_ it!”

Larka’s anger died as quickly as it had grown.

Kelso looked at Novia almost pityingly, coming a long way from when she only looked at others with widened, quivering eyes. If Novia had been in a more observant state, she would have proudly claimed it her influence. If Larka was less fidgety and distracted, she would have thought that the Sorting Hat was really quite right after all—the waters in the Gryffindor tower did promote courageous growth*****.

“Besides how could he not fall for me? I did everything right. I loved Quidditch and their stupid pranks. I ate junk food without inhibition and laughed at their jokes, however dirty and strange they may be. I played cards and gambled and _adored_ his beastly motorbike. I was the right amount of difficult, only arguing or objecting when he was in a good mood. I always made him wait but I never showed signs of primping my hair or makeup—it was all effortless. I never suggested we stay in or watch a romantic comedy or go shopping. I didn’t care what other people thought but always had a smile ready. I was the dream girl. Never nagging, never disapproving, never clingy, never complaining, always flipping my hair carelessly at the right moment, always down to do whatever. Everything was in good fun. How could he not love that? Every bloke loves the imaginary perfect girl.”

“The perfect girl?” Larka asked, bewildered.

“Yeah,” Novia grumbled, “isn’t that what every bloke wants? The girl who _gets_ him, even his bad habits and bad personal hygiene?”

Larka wanted to say that Sirius didn’t look like he had bad personal hygiene, but felt like she was missing the point.

“Maybe his perfect girl isn’t the fun-all-the-time Clara Bow girl?” Kelso mused.

“But _every_ girl that he’s been really into has been an extension of him, a companion for his own fun-all-the-time, young-only-once, don’t-give-a-damn type…” Novia wailed.

“But what’s the point,” Larka asked, “of him loving a carefully curated combination of traits? Sooner or later it’ll come out—that you think Quidditch is stupid and beer is disgusting. That a size four doesn’t just happen by itself. That dirty jokes and pranks are juvenile.”

“So?” Novia shrugged, “Sure, if we were married it’d be terrible eventually, or I’d have to keep up the charade. We’ll probably end up hating each other. But it’s not like I’m shooting for the long term. I mean, I _knew_ that it wasn’t going to last forever—Sirius’s not the sort you settle down with, not the type for marrying. Too volatile and irresponsible. He’s the type for having a good time with, and I want my school years to be about that. I’m young; I can afford a mistake like Sirius. I _want_ a mistake like him. He can’t just take that away from me.”

“But if you never wanted a long term relationship, why are you so upset?”

“I don’t know,” Novia admitted glumly, “I just am.”

Kelso was indeed wise, because she said, “Knowing _you_ will end it _some_ day isn’t the same as _him_ ending it _now_.”

“I guess,” Novia said, “I’m just so _angry_ all the time, but the smallest reminder makes me want to cry like a baby. I hate it.”

Indeed, Novia had lost the capacity to listen to the Beatles, and the mere mention of AC/DC or Maurin Quina reduced her to a bawling mess. Any song that they had danced to or was in the background when they were together; the sight of any flower that Sirius had plucked for her; any talk of mischievous pranks; even the whiff of lit tobacco, or the logo of Sirius’s favorite stout—these were all forbidden territory now, at least until Novia had gotten over her violent affliction, sinking into a softer melancholy and finally into a heartless forgetfulness (she would eventually, given that she didn’t go over her sorrows religiously every day).

“I’m so sorry,” Larka said to her, “but I promise it will be okay soon. Better now than later.”

Novia burst into uncontrollable tears again. Larka looked at her helplessly. “That’s—” Novia stuttered through forceful crying, “that’s what—he—Remus—said—afterwards...”

Oh bugger, this was going to be impossible, Larka thought as she tramped off. Novia might have begun this relationship thinking it was a passing phase, but it was clear that the trauma was severe and painful, even if it was still in passing.

“Black,” Larka hissed at the entrance to the Common Room, but he wasn’t there. She stalked off to the kitchen. He wasn’t there either. She checked the library, which was stupid, because of course he wasn’t there. By the time she went down to the Quidditch pitch, she had lost some fervour, but the sight of the boy, his tee sticking to his body in patches of sweat, face lit up brilliantly in exuberant heartlessness, rekindled in Larka a hot fury. It wasn’t fair that he was having fun and looking so wonderful, when Novia needed an extra layer of concealer for her dark circles and the way her skin flared up.

“Black!” she shouted, her loud voice surprising even herself.

James’s pass nearly hit Sirius on the back of his head when he twisted to see the source of the shout. “Oy Larka! Sorry old girl, no display of astounding feats defying death and gravity today, maybe a rain check?” he winked. He had the audacity to _wink_ at her.

“You had said that nothing happened, you _liar_ ,” Larka spat out.

Sirius was visibly shocked by her outrageous display of viciousness—outrageous for Larka anyhow. “Oh yeah?” he rolled back his shoulders and palmed the base of his neck to loosen some muscle as he came closer. “Then tell me what _did_ I do?”

“You led her on,” Larka had a hand in that as well, with endless praise and encouragements; her stomach churned when as she blamed Sirius, “and then you _humiliated_ her in _public_.”

“Join the hit the pariah party,” Sirius scoffed, achieving a bewildering level of condescension, “I did no such thing. Your friend was delusional and _she_ started the row in the pub.”

Larka seriously deliberated if she should hit him—she had read about right-hooks—or throw a curse, although she was as familiar with magic duelling as she was with the physical.

“Well?” Sirius taunted, “If you’re not going to hex or punch me, then allow me to continue enjoying this beautiful day.” He lifted one eyebrow, quickly gazing up at the overcast sky, and turned back around.

That was when Larka quickly yelled _augebimus surculi_ and Sirius’s marble skin began puckering as he screamed out in pain. Tiny yellowish green shoots started to push out of his pores, pushing aside the creased skin slowly to reveal asparagus-like tips. Sirius let out a long howl and with his wand began to cast various healing spells on himself while his left hand couldn’t help but start scraping the budding sprouts, and soon his face was covered in bloody marks.

James dropped the ball and scrambled to Sirius’s side, binding his hands in a back vice grip and shouted at Peter, “Go get Pomfrey!”

“Er,” Larka took out her wand again to say _quiesco auximus_ and the slow but vicious growth stopped and the sprouts vanished, leaving behind only blood and upturned flesh.

“What _was_ that,” Peter asked in horror, scuttling back from his run to the hospital.

Larka looked guiltily away, “It’s a spell I use to encourage growth when I’m gardening at home.” She hadn’t ever used it on _people_ before, but it was the single most familiar spell to her, and she had incanted it without even thinking about it.

“You mean it’s not a duelling hex?” James asked in a crescendo.

“That was _wicked_ ,” Sirius said, trembling in James’s arms.

Larka, trembling herself, tried to show as much as dignity as she could, held her chin up high and walked away—

—And was blockaded by Remus. “Larka,” he said firmly, “We should talk.”

Oh no, she forgot Remus was a Prefect—was she going to get detention? Or worse, lose _points_ for Gryffindor. Oh dear, this was getting very out of control. Oh dear, oh dear, oh _dear_.

Remus chuckled shakily, “Just wanted to talk to you about what happened. Earlier, with your friend Novia, I mean, not this, which never happened. Kudos on the ingenuity though, I don’t think I’ve seen Sirius that badly shaken in a while.”

“You’re not mad?” Larka checked; usually Remus was more logical, “Or about to give me detention?” she said with a lowered voice, like it was a bad word.

“Decidedly not,” he reassured her. “I just wanted to apologize for Sirius; he can be a bit of a git at times.”

Larka gave him a look.

“Fine, he can be a major git a lot of times. In spite or in light of that, I want to apologize because he could have handled the situation last weekend better, much better, although it’s not entirely his irredeemable fault.”

“Of course you would defend him,” Larka said darkly.

“You know me better than that, I hope,” Remus said calmly, “I do try to be impartial, and I’ll tell you what happened there without bias.”

“Okay, I’d appreciate that.” She could only avoid the triggers for upsetting Novia only if Larka knew exactly what transpired; and if Edgar Allen Poe had taught her anything, it was that unreliable narratives never helped anybody.

“Least I can do. I’m not sure what you know, but Novia had asked Sirius to go to Hogsmeade with her, but when Sirius said he was going out, James naturally followed and Sirius would never say no to James so we all went.”

Novia must have been miffed right from the start.

“Novia wasn’t too pleased, I could tell,” Remus said, reading her mind again, “It all went down rather poorly after that. Novia wanted to go to the sweets shop, I think, but Sirius was oblivious—or he wanted to be oblivious at least—and we went to the pet store for some owlery stuff for James and then to the pub. We’re chummy with the waitress at the pub, not sure if you know the place or the waitress: she’s a lovely person, the rebellious but pragmatic sort. She ran away from home in a fit about something and serves us tap at a discount. She throws in a refill too, whenever Sirius flirts with her, which is always. Anyway, she had said something about him and Novia in matching sets, and Novia said something about having unanimous good taste. Sirius wasn’t too pleased about it. Then Max—Maxine, the waitress—said ‘oh speaking of matching, you don’t happen to own a tux do you?’”

“What a silly question,” Larka commented. He was probably presented to his mummy wrapped in a tuxedo right after birth, which was a funny mental imagery that she refused to dwell on.

“Max doesn’t really know who we are, least of all Sirius. She wanted Sirius to go to an ex-boyfriend’s wedding****** with her. It’s _disco_ themed. And for every snogging session, she’ll give us a shot of the house best.”

There was no way Sirius would refuse that. He loved gaudy events and free drinks even more so.

“So of course he accepted readily, and of course Novia got mad—rightly so, in my opinion, but moot point. Novia stood up and loudly accused him of cheating right in front of her eyes, and Sirius had tried to placate her at first by saying it’s just an innocuous event. But you know Novia’s temper better than anybody I presume, and since Sirius isn’t the paragon of patience himself, it developed into a _huge_ fight. Novia tried to cast the pimple curse on him, which—well, you don’t mess with Sirius’s face.”

Larka instinctively looked at Sirius, who had patched himself up excellently already.

Remus shrugged, “At least not without creativity. Maybe, oh, ten other Hogwarts students were right around us, and I think two professors, so unfortunately there wasn’t much we can do in damage control. It’s better now,” he added with a sigh, “than later, I’m sure you’d agree.”

Larka didn’t—or rather, she hadn’t before this weekend, and she fled with the shame that it took three telling of the same story for her to see it clearly.

-.-.-.-.-

“You _sure_ you’re alright?” James asked again, more worried now that Sirius was still kneeling on the ground.

“Yes, yes,” Sirius said breezily, “though she probably killed a thousand mini-Siriuses, so humanity is indebted to her.”

James chuckled and Remus shook his head. Sirius’s self-deprecating humour came out in the weirdest of times. Remus was glad that Sirius behaved: although Sirius didn’t make a habit of fighting with the fairer sex, he had been known to be ruthless if provoked enough. But, Remus supposed, it would be hard to face Larka and hex her; she was so full of kindness for the world but Remus about how the world would treat her. Sirius had on multiple occasions expressed that he thought Larka to be naïve and ignorant, but Remus disagreed. Arlene—he glowed a little thinking about her—Arlene was ignorant, the sort of youthful, self-assured cluelessness that came from having a charmed life. Kind of like James; and a little spoiled, selfish, and supercilious, also just like James (Remus didn’t even know why he got the butterflies around Arlene, but he had never been one to be attracted to the easy, nice ones, did he?)

Larka though, she was just good because she didn’t know how to be otherwise. He wouldn’t use the terms ‘pure’ or ‘innocent’, because they were wrong words to use; they brought to mind white dresses, which was something adults used on little girls. Larka, though, she was probably never put into a white dress. She probably had a wonderful childhood, the sort that should be impossible, with parents the perfect balance of doting and stern, a home just the right blend of urbanity and rusticity, and long childhood hours with the freedom to do absolutely nothing. She had heard about and read about things like treachery, suffering, deception, conspiracy, murder, death, but the closest to pain that she had ever gotten was when she fell and scrapped her knees, the closest to loss was when she lost her rainbow coloured doll that she slept with*******.

Larka was far too good to be tangled up with Sirius’s love affairs. If nothing extraordinary happened, it was most likely she would have nothing to do with them every again, which was definitely for the best of Larka _and_ Novia.

“You’ll be fine,” Remus said to Sirius, pulling him up, “after a drink or two. Come on, I’ll make tea and you can spike it and I’ll pretend I didn’t notice.”

Sirius grumbled but perked up once he heard about Remus making tea; Sirius had a strange weakness for people making him tea in bed.

“And we’ve to find Pete and tell him not to fret. You’ve got to admit though,” James followed them with a grin, “the girl’s got balls.”

* * *

 

* To be fair, that was indeed a logical summation of Sirius A. Black’s past dalliances with the female kind.

Sirius, in his long tenor as the resident playboy, had struck gold several times. Beyond the occasional episode as arm-candy (he was frequently passed around by girls in need of a striking date to events or to appear before ex-boyfriends), he held a few more significant relationships. In First Year, as an attempt to rebel against his mother, he had dated a Hufflepuff girl with mixed parentage, a curly-headed blue-eyed little doll whose childhood breezed along a movie on account of her being such a dear, adorable child. He lost his first kiss and more to an olive-skinned, apple-cheeked beauty with whom he kept up a long winter’s affair. By Fourth Year, Sirius had fledged to be a truly skilled scoundrel, because he scored Sybil Cornforth, a glowering femme fatale two years his senior and the undoubted queen of the Seventh Years. The details of how Sirius Black got the most prized girl of the Seventh Year to date _him_ (who had yet finished his growth spurt), were vague at best. Inside sources whispered tales of her modelling nude for a reinstallation of _Lady Lilith_ , a famed painting that the Blacks owned. However, the aforementioned sources also whispered that Sirius had fought and tamed a griffon that summer, so the rumours were of disputed reliability. It was unclear exactly how long that went on for, but within three months, Sirius was also seen around Hogsmeade with the Scarlett Brühl, who was never seen without her signature cat-eye and red lip makeup. Things came to an explosive confrontation one day, where Sybil, Scarlett and Sirius met by chance in the front courtyard. All three publically dumped each other (that was, both Sybil and Scarlett dumped Sirius, while Sirius simultaneously dumped the two girls). After graduation, Scarlett would start a small makeup store quirkily based on the concept of man-repelling, and was wildly successful. Sirius’s most recent relationship was just last year, with Claudia, a partial Veela-blooded girl. The longest relationship that Sirius had to date, however, was with the pureblood girl that Missus Black had determined to be his lineage-carrier long ago, with whom Sirius spent many long, boring, suffering events, and was forced to dance with a great deal. This particular relationship outlasted all others by very long, lasting years, well into his Hogwarts years, instead of weeks and months.

What united all of these females, beyond a striking beauty, was their fair hair, by either birth or choice, and difficult nature. The former might have been a continued rebellion against his own dark-haired heritage, but the latter was entirely happenstance.

** Larka J. Roxburgh found life forms beside _Homo sapiens_ to be distracting as well when she wanted some introverted time with herself. The Roxburgh family actually had a history of conversing with animals when distraught. It was a well-known and little-understood Tradition of the Roxburgh family ever after Sir Walter Scott Roxburgh of Scotland, half talking to himself, confided in a lion (as was on the family crest). He got unexpected results, as the lion lowered its head, invited him to follow it. It led him to a young, distraught man, who told him of his failed Jacobite aspirations due to flighty guns and stupid marshes that no army could travel. This solved a major existential crisis of Walter’s, who had been seriously questioning his capability as an author and the importance of the overlooked, much-snubbed novels in the literary world. Walter abandoned this young man immediately (he had been doing an admirable job of brooding, Walter did not wish to disrupt) and took up his quill. Later scholars (or rather, one notably scholarly Roxburgh, because really nobody else was interested in the Roxburgh family legends all that much) found that the lion in question was actually a Kneazle, which explained the intelligence (and perhaps the mischief).

*** Sirius A. Black was in no position to mock James C. Potter’s lack of skill in chess. Despite chess being another one of the mandatory courses in a pureblood young heir’s upbringing, both heirs failed miserably at the sport. James was atrocious on account of his parents never having the heart to make the petulant James do anything he didn’t want to. Sirius was atrocious because he could rarely think beyond two immediate moves, his mind holding a thousand threads and then dropping them all the moment any became tangled. However, Remus J. Lupin was a good sport and frequently tried to improve James’s skill by utterly demolishing James in chess. He refused to ever play Sirius though, since Sirius was not only a notorious cheat, but also a notorious sore loser.

**** The book was _Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border_. Remus J. Lupin had a weakness for lyric poetry—the sort of oral narrative form traditionally accompanied by musical score. It was comforting to him, his inheritance from his opa, who had sailed on a slow boat to Wales, a professor of folk studies specializing on the working-class discourses represented in ballads. Remus did not inherit duchies or castles or great manors on top of lakes, but he had this: reading ballads was a balm to any agitation, like how his grandmère crocheted. However, he could never admit this to James or Sirius, so he took up Muggle Studies and disguised it as coursework on Anglo-Scottish balladry.

***** Gryffindor waters did no such thing—they shared the same plumbing system as the rest of the castle. Kelso D. Meadowes had always been empathetically inclined; it was just that prior to this she had no occasion to display such empathy.

****** Maxine Wayne was fifteen when she ran away from home. She had gotten a funny letter when she was ten, but ‘magic’ wasn’t something she was interested in; no, her gift was her voice: she had the voice of a nightingale—everybody said so. She wanted to make a name for herself in the music industry. Her father, a small town clergy, and her mother, a laundress, did not understand where their daughter got all these fancies in her wee head. So she ran away from St Asaph and hitchhiked to London (when she was eighteen, her roommate got murdered while hitchhiking, and she realized belatedly how lucky she had been). London was not friendly to a young lass without money or family. Soon enough, she started drifting to smaller and smaller places, from Bedford to Coventry, Nottingham, then York and finally Hornsea town, where she had all but given up on singing. She liked Hornsea: it reminded her of home just enough, but couldn’t bring herself to head back to Wales. What would the neighbours say? It might have sounded trivial to a big city fella, or even a Hornsea resident, but in a town of barely a thousand people… So Maxine stayed. It was decent living, serving drinks and living on tips, and she didn’t have to mask up the occasional uncontrolled spark or explosion; besides, she still sang for a crowd, which was what counted, right?

Her ex-boyfriend was this asshole in York, for whom she had almost stayed in York forever, for whom she left York forever. He and she both came from nothing, and she had thought that bonded them. He had an easy hand when it came to money and gambled occasionally, drank and smoked more than he ought but his voice was low and husky and when he sang, even old crumpets blushed. He was a bit freewheeling, but none of the other girls were serious, and this was true love, innit? One day, out of the blue, he kicked her out of his flat—their flat, she paid half the rent!—for some little tart with a rich daddy. She was sweet, he said; she didn’t know the hardships of life, he said, and he didn’t want to show her; she was his true love, he said. She wanted to ask him then what was she?—but she saw the BMW that the tart rolled by in, and Max got what true love was.

So when she got word that he was getting married to that same little sweet true love of his (their mates were always more loyal to her than him), she had to go. But she couldn’t bring her man, a chav with a scar up the side of his head into his hair from his days in [Her Majesty’s Young Offender’s Institution] Northallerton, who probably wouldn’t understand why she needed to go to this wedding so badly. Enter Sirius A. Black, a posh spaz if she ever saw one (just listen to him talk!), even if he was an alright kid by posh standards. The wedding day turned out to be one of the best days of her life. Max didn’t know how the kid did it, but he got them a Rolls Royce (she’d never even touched one let alone ridden in one) with a chauffeur (a chauffeur!). He even got her a proper dress and everything, said it was payment for all the free shots (he could have booked the house with all this dosh). So when they showed up, Sirius impossibly dashing in a tuxedo (probably from someplace like Harvey Nichols, she remembered the brand from back when she turned shoplifted goods), in a Rolls Royce, and her radiant in a gown worth more than their old rent—well, at that point Max wasn’t sure what she was trying to prove anymore, but she proved it alright. The look on the bastard’s face… was not one of the many she thought he would have. That was when she realized that they were separate people now, with little to link them. She owed him nothing, least of all her heartstrings. That night, she said the ‘l’ word to her chav boyfriend, and he, staggered and panicking, proposed.

Funny, how the world worked, innit?

******* Basically, Remus J. Lupin was wrong about everything.

Larka J. Roxburgh was indeed never put into a white dress, primarily because she had been a clumsy child and they had lived in Cheviot Hills, a patch of historically pastoral land in Northumberland just south of the borders. The first few years of Larka’s life had been so far removed from civilization that she had been utterly terrified the first time she saw a car, whirring into a stop by their front gate. She had immediately wanted to call for Mum and Dad, but stopped herself because she did not want them to be caught by this big monster as well—but she was only four, so could not stop crying, and loudly at that. Imagine her astonishment when they moved to Guildford.

Larka did not live in the Goldilocks home of the perfect sternness and doting, rustic and urbanity. Neither of her parents was stern, although Kenneth Roxburgh tried to be, and there was not a single person alive who would claim that Cheviot Hills had any trace of ‘urbanity’.

Larka also never owned a rainbow coloured doll. The first and last doll she owned was a gift from the visiting Uncle Bob McKnight when she was five. He brought with him a large, plush, distinctively cartoonlike rendition of Snow White, complete with frilly clothing and a red apple sewn between the round globes meant to be its hands. When Uncle Bob and Mum were talking, little Larka rolled (her favourite method of movement even at five) to the kitchen and climbed the counter to fetch scissors. She meticulously cut the apple off, gently but firmly told Snow White that she shouldn’t eat the apple, and buried it in the garden. Prudencia Roxburgh was mortified by her daughter’s destructive instincts (scissors! How did she even get scissors?) and never allowed dolls again.

 


	8. My North South East and West

**Chapter** **6**

**My North South East and West**

Here came the crucial moment in every story in which the hero was to fail his role.

Naturally, this precipice of failure came at midnight, the hour of clandestine romance or some great drama. This particular night, as with every other Wednesday nights, Larka was in the Astronomy tower. Despite being in a secluded spot at night, nothing much happened to her. She was also much too distracted by eating puff pastries (she must _not_ leave any flaky trace behind) to properly infer how the constellational movements were in fact very ominous.

So she did not know of any failing or dishonour that went on at this time.

-.-.-.-

There was nothing worse than to wake up in nothing but one’s knickers with a hangover and a slow realization that perhaps the hazy flashes _weren’t_ just a nightmare. His stomach both fell and rose up into his throat, and Sirius imagined that he puked up his entire world in his vomit: the only people he held dear (his only, his own, the family that he chose), the very ideas that he thought was fundamental to himself (that he was _better_ than this, than them), the things that he swore to protect and nurture and not fucking raze to the ground.

To hell with that; there was nothing worse than waking up with the realization of _what he had done_.

-.-.-.-

“Larka?” A pause, “Oh _Larka_ , the fairest songbird of the legends!”

The familiar theatrical lilt of Sirius broke Larka out of her deep concentration. Larka looked around the mostly deserted Dining Hall, but there was no James or Remus or Peter in sight. Sirius, however, had naturally taken the liberty to sit down next to her before she made any response. Larka would have gladly paid any sum of money* to keep him away. She wished nothing more than to avoid Sirius until perhaps both of them developed a forgetful memory out of old age.

“Larkaaaaa,” Sirius dragged on the last syllable of her name until she was forced to look at him. “It’s been _weeks_. You can’t still be narked over this whole,” Sirius waved his hands demonstratively, “thing.”

Larka went back to her book. She wanted to finish her required reading section in the _Analysis of Astronomical Shifting_.

“You are, aren’t you? Well that’s a daft thing to be upset over.”

A page was flipped (although she couldn’t remember what it was about).

“Larka? Really, _I_ ’m not at fault—you know that in the depth of your reasonable, well-read heart!”

The book was shut with a thud, and Larka opened another thin volume, _Role of the Disinfection Charm during Childbirth in Elizabethan England_.

“Even if I had the tiniest, littlest, faintest blame, it was by no means intentionally malevolent.”

_During the Elizabethan age, the dangers of giving birth had significantly decreased from previous ages, although one in five women still died in childbirth. However, because of the low social importance placed on women, much of a woman’s life was spent pregnant._

“You don’t have a right to be angry with me,” Sirius grumble, picking at the cuff of his leather jacket. The stitching there was worn and needed repair soon—which had nothing to do with her.

 _However, because of the low social importance_ —

“Larka!”

She put away the book with a sigh, “I’m not angry with you.”

Sirius rolled his eyes, “But you refuse to talk to me!”

“That doesn’t mean that I’m angry with you though,” Larka explained.

“Then what’s with,” he swept his arms grandly, “the whole silence treatment?”

“That’s because I don’t want to talk with you.”

“You’re still cross then!” he cried triumphantly, “Come now, be reasonable and yell at me instead.”

“Why should I yell?”

“Stop being childish,” Sirius pouted.

Larka frowned, “How so?” she asked genuinely, “I don’t talk to you because I don’t want to talk to you, how is that childish? Compared to yelling, especially?”

“Because,” Sirius countered fiercely.

“What has yelling and arguing ever achieved?”

It was Sirius’s turn to frown, “It’s a very soothing and liberating at the same time—it’s what everybody does, a therapeutic way to get steam out.”

“But I don’t have ‘steam’,” Larka said sensibly.

Sirius snorted and looked ready to say something** but in the end, he decided against it and stomped away.

-.-.-.-

It was as if seeing Larka by herself had triggered something in Sirius, for over the next few days, he discovered new and always surprising ways to assault Larka when she thought she was alone (or as alone as one could be in a confined boarding school).

Even Larka began to notice how strange it was. That was, strange beyond Sirius Black, drama king extraordinaire who displayed a general distaste of people, seeking out her, Larka Roxburgh, recluse of few words and one of the masses, to, well, _talk_ , for a lack of better understanding. What was truly strange, troublingly so (again, besides him making Larka twitchy when alone, especially alone), was that Sirius no longer was seen with his mates. James, Remus, and Peter all still were joined by the hip, but their group excluded Sirius for some reason. And Sirius, attention seeker that he was, slithered away whenever his friends showed up.

Highly suspect; perhaps even a setup for some _prank_. All the attention Sirius brought with him made Larka twitchy even when alone, especially when alone. She hoped that _she_ wasn’t part of some jape, since Sirius was being so, well, friendly wasn’t quite the right word, was it?

-.-.-.-

“Whatcha doing?” Sirius plopped down backwards on the chair he had dragged from another table, slumping and resting his head on the back of the chair while his thighs flanked it.

Larka gave him a look. It was the library. She had parchment and quill out, a hefty tome called _Analysis of Astronomical Shifting_ overstuffed with bookmarks and dog-ears. What did he think she was doing?

Relentless was perhaps one of Sirius’s main virtues, so he asked again, “Whatcha doing?”

Larka thought that his mother must go mad with his manners, but then realized that must have been the point. “Writing a paper.”

“Sinistra would hardly notice if you just copied the entire section from that book,” Sirius recommend shrewdly.

“But that’s wrong,” Larka said blankly.

Sirius shrugged, “Saves time. Who cares about some,” he shifted his head to read the title, “Martin Ryle anyway? Even his name sounds made-up.”

“ _My_ parents would be disappointed in me if I got expelled for plagiarizing,” Larka said.

He snorted with disdain, “Oh parental disappointment, the epitome of pain!” Then as if suddenly figuring out something, “Say, you’re a _pureblood_ , aren’t you?”

“Only a tiny bit, and about half a century ago,” she didn’t know how pureblood she was considered by someone so incredibly, well, pureblood as Sirius. They shared almost nothing in common, except for perhaps a sound etiquette, but even that was a superficial common ground: good form to her was like taking a test; all the facts were in her head if she reached for it, but it took deliberation—a pose. For Sirius, well, bad form was the case.

“Well, that explains it,” he decided, flipping his hair back.

Larka put her quill down. “You,” she said disbelievingly, “ _you_ trying to summarize my life with my birth?”

He had the decency to look fleetingly contrite, which was enough to soften Larka.

She sighed. “My parents have old blood I think, we have only one house in the country, and it’s pretty meagre comparatively,” Larka felt bad for him so she went on with the conversation, even going so far as capping her quill. Mum had always envied the proper pureblood for their old manors and estates. Wasn’t the same, she bemoaned over every holiday dinner, without the bonded house elves, ancient wards, and (most importantly) sprawling land. There was probably more to the pureblood heritage than just that, but—“I think inheriting thrones and crests and whatnot is ridiculous.” Her Dad thought that, but he didn’t exactly enforce this ideology on her, so it counted as her own thought.

“Indeed, the only thing worth inheriting is a bank vault,” Sirius said solemnly.

Was that a trace of resentment that she detected? No doubt Sirius, as the heir to the Black lineage inherited all sorts of nonsensical stuff, like laurels or sceptres or the scabbard of Excalibur. Or, more usefully, “A few estates would also be nice as summer or winter villas.”

“We do have quite a few interesting getaways,” Sirius said thoughtfully, all resentment forewent.

Larka opportunistically took up her quill again as Sirius tried to count his family’s properties.

-.-.-.-

Something had to be seriously wrong. No pranks happened to her—in fact, all pranking had ceased, which made for a very peaceful Hogwarts, but it was the sort of peace that buzzed with something just underneath its surface, like custard bubbling underneath the hard top of a crème brûlée.

Larka was mildly concerned for Sirius, a bit more avidly than how one was concerned for a classmate’s sudden illness, but not by much. She neither thought she could do something, nor thought her concern mattered, so instead she turned her mind to the enthralling question of whether dinner would have crème brûlée.

-.-.-.-

 “I heard from Estelle who heard from Rita who said she saw Sirius pestering you in the hallway,” Novia said to her one day as they were reading for sleep. Novia had stripped her day clothes and was stepping into a pair of pyjama shorts and had every appearance of making an offhand remark.

Rita Addario didn’t know Sirius beyond a general common room acquaintance. Estelle Qualls didn’t like James (Larka vaguely recalled a loud fight about the Ball), and so she didn’t like Sirius by association. Novia wasn’t on close terms with Estelle. It seemed a very roundabout way for Novia to reach this bit of gossip. “Um, yeah,” Larka said, “He tried to tell me something yesterday in the hallway, I think about toads…”

Sirius had, in fact, stopped her to tell her about the subculture that worshipped the Surinam Toad and his conspiracy theory of their role in the scheme to kill Hippolyta and make it look like Penthesilea had accidentally killed her sister. It was completely crazy, but a little fascinating as well, so she wouldn’t have called it ‘pestering’, but—Larka peeked at Novia—she supposed that it could be called ‘pestering’.

“Just ignore him,” Novia said, a little too zealously, “He _hates_ being ignored.”

“I’ll try my best,” Larka promised.

-.-.-.-

True to her word, the next time Sirius found her in the Common Room in the very early hours of the morning that might still have counted as night for some, Larka tried ignoring him. She had woken up much earlier than she planned, so she came downstairs, turned on some lights, and watched the pale fingers gripping the edge of the sky turn vibrantly orange, then blue. The view from the Gryffindor tower was spectacular if one paid attention to it at the right time. She had the perfect setup wedged between the back of the largest sofa and the glass of the floor-length window: a blanket, a cup of ginger hot chocolate, and a small pocket novel, not really for reading but more for the comforting weight of a book, knowing that a whole new world made of ink was cupped in her palm. She could barely fit in here, but the compact space made her feel sheltered. If she leaned forward, her breath made the glass foggy, which she did at times and traced nonsensical words into the vapour.

Sirius had probably heard the glass squeaking and crawled onto the sofa, bending his neck over the back to talk to the top of her head. “Lovely sunrise,” he said in a bored drawl, “but real life never looks as good as the film, eh?”

Films had managed to capture some truly breath-taking views of natural wonders like sunrises and sunsets, the ocean and the mountains. They did for the modern mind what Turner did for mid nineteenth century Londoners. Everybody expected everything to be spectacular now. It took a certain mind-set to not be desensitized to things that one had already witnessed. Luckily, Larka tended to be easily pleased. “There’s something for viewing it first hand, real time though,” Larka defended.

Then she remembered her previous conversation with Novia and added, “Go away.”

“Now Larka, and here I thought we had moved past that stage of animosity! To the next stage of carefully circling each other like wary animals.”

“No,” she said flatly.

“Honestly, if I didn’t know better I’d say you’re trying to get rid of me. But of course I’m _much_ more astute than that.”

“Please go talk to somebody else,” Larka said politely.

“I don’t _have_ anybody else to talk to,” Sirius carped.

“Anybody here,” she made a discrete gesture to the entire Gryffindor dormitory, “Well, a lot of them at least,” she corrected herself, most being girls, but unnecessary detail, “would be thrilled to talk to you.”

“No, that’s not actual _talking_ ,” Sirius denied petulantly.

“You know, Sirius,” Larka looked up at his pout, “I don’t know what happened between the four of you, or more likely, what you did to warrant this ‘exile’,” (he probably would use that word), “but have you tried talking to them?”

Sirius looked away. “You don’t know what I did,” he mumbled darkly.

Larka nodded, she indeed didn’t, so she supposed she had no right to judge the tenacity of their bond, “In that case then other people would love to take up their mantle.”

“Do you?” he asked.

“Not really,” she rejected mildly, “you draw too much attention.”

“Brilliant,” Sirius grinned madly, “Best mates forever!” he declared and reached out a hand to muss her hair.

Larka frantically protected her head. “I’m not sure if you properly understand English,” but there was no reasoning with Sirius.

-.-.-.-

A casual Wednesday night, thankfully without Sirius. In fact, she had not seen Sirius for some time. That was to say, she saw naught of him for a whole of four days, which she had alarmingly realized, to be much longer than she was used to at this point. She had gotten into the habit of avoiding him (then when that failed ignoring, and when _that_ invariably failed, holding a brisk conversation), so it was disconcerting that he no longer appeared next to her in the library, loitering the halls after class, lurking in the Common Room too early or too late. It had paradoxically been easy—easier—to _not_ think of him when he was there.

Nevertheless, it was Wednesday, and that meant stargazing night. Astronomical mathematics required both advanced maths and arduous star charting. It was a relatively new facet of study (as in, years in the making instead of decades or centuries), but Larka harboured great faith in the field and, if completely honest, she would have blushingly admitted secret hopes of being a pioneer. The work was often tedious, but Larka was good at repetitive work; besides she was a natural at charting, even Professor Phelps said so.

It was frigid outside, the air slashing like a thousand paper cuts when the slightest wind arose, but the sky was immaculately clear and the moon was devastatingly bright. The best part about winter was that she no longer worried about ivy pushing through the cracks between stones and unsettling the architecture. Also winter down coats made everybody looked puffy and ridiculous so it was normal to be like that. Larka decided to brave the February night and put on a double layer of down coats, holding a bag full of star charts and comfort food*** , exited the castle looking like she should have rolled rather than walked. If anybody saw her, they would think she was mulling over some break up.

On her way to the observatory, Larka passed the occasional couple snogging in some dark shade of a cloister or tucked in the corner of a building. She decided to cut through the Quidditch pit, where there would just be lots and lots of empty space.

Larka liked being alone in the dark: it made her feel completely at home. Even in her residence room, Novia was there, and as much as she loved her friend, there was just the sense of constantly being around other people. In the night though, utterly alone and calculating the movements of tiny flecks of light in the sky, Larka didn’t care if her posture was unseemly or if her clothes creased too much (both of which drove Mum spare).

Larka thought she saw something ahead, a dark line or a shape in the air. She halted and squinted into the darkness. Something flitted across the sky, zigzagging through the air with dangerous speed, abruptly changing directions with a loud crack each time. It was directly above the Quidditch pitch, and as she went closer, Larka realized that it was somebody beating a Bludger.

Well, was beating a Bludger until he took a beating from the Bludger. Sirius—because who _else_ could it be?—wobbled on the broomstick and fell. He must have cushioned his landing, because the grass swooshed like a huge gust of wind blew at the field’s centre, and immediately after impact, Larka heard groaning and creative cursing. (Who else but Sirius would say something like Holy Merlin’s Hairy Bleeding Bollocks?)

Larka looked to the castle, the enveloping warm glow of comfort and heating, and then to the nearby east, where the observatory stood towering over all the other buildings, and finally at the dark, unmoving shape on the frozen field. She let out a long sigh. She supposed that being the sort of casual acquaintances as they were, it wouldn’t do for her to let Sirius freeze to his death.

She made her way towards Sirius and close up, she could see that he was lying limply on the ground, a hand clutching his right ankle. “Are you okay?” what a stupid question, so she asked again, “Can you speak? Are you badly injured anywhere?”

“Oh, I’m just the bee’s knees,” Sirius said light-heartedly, as if he didn’t look like a stuck garden gnome, “We have a long history, that particular Bludger**** and I. Hey what’s the difference between a Bludger and a baby?”

She ignored the setup to his joke. “Do you need help?”

“I’ve never kicked a football over fifty metres!” he said and started cackling.

Do not indulge him. “Or Madam Pomfrey? Should I get Madam Pomfrey?”

“Nah,” he flicked his wand and muttering something at his ankle, “Takes more than gravity and a frozen mud pit to take me out. Just help me get over there to the bleachers.”

“Alright,” she did not question him. “Put your arm around my shoulder.”

He, surprisingly, obeyed.

"Ready?" she asked and dragged him up at his nod. She almost toppled over with his additional weight.

“Over there,” he pointed with his right hand, “There’s a large gap by the last row that’s good for rolling around.”

“What an odd thing to notice,” Larka remarked.

Sirius tried to flash a rakish grin, but the darkness masked his face, “I have a proclivity for certain activities there.”

“Like what?”

Sirius clicked his tongue, disappointed at not scandalizing her, “Oh I sometimes rest there after a Quidditch match*****.” Public opinion probably would have been more scandalized by Sirius hiding than Sirius having uninhibited sex in the open—and yes, Larka knew what he was insinuating, she was fifteen and not dumb; she just preferred not to take his bait.

There was indeed a gap between the wall and the bleachers, and it was just wide enough for two or three people. She allowed Sirius to slowly sit down.

“Aren’t you going to sit and make sure I don’t freeze to death?” He was in a greatcoat of indiscernible colour, which was definitely not enough for the Scottish winter’s night.

Larka could barely make out his face by the moonlight, but she thought he was looking earnest, which definitely meant he was not, “Well—”

He squirmed to the side and patted the space beside him, “Great view of night sky. Isn’t that what you came out here for?”

“Oh, yes, I suppose,” Larka remembered, clutching at her bag with the star charts still inside.

“This way, then.”

“Okay,” she sat down, their puffed up down coats whispering against each other in contact. It felt natural, giving in to what he wanted.

“You know your timing was off. I had been beating that thing like a piñata for ages before you showed up.”

She didn’t doubt that. “You always manage to get into trouble,”

Sirius laughed and crossed his arms behind his head, leaning backwards until he was on his back, gazing upwards to the extended view of the star speckled sky. "Trouble, love, is just like air, _air_ to me!"

She did not like being called ‘love’ (or rather, the way he said it), but the view was indeed spectacular: a sky like diamonds littered on thick black velvet, the lights growing stronger and fainter rhythmically. The castle was dark and quiet, student activity paused past curfew, and the main body blocked the staff towers so the entire castle looked like a black mass to the North. The moon, a swollen orb gently beginning to wan, scattered its silver light and frosted every surface. The light it cast down was pure and clear, unlike the moon’s faintly blemished face. There were no sounds except their gentle breathing.

“It’s bad form to remain silence at a dinner party, you know,” Sirius said, enunciating purposefully.

“I do know,” Larka said, finding herself having lain down as well, “But I’ve always been pants at conversation.”

“Well, talk about Jane Austen or something you and M—you birds like******.”

“Do you even like Austen?” Larka asked curiously. Sirius didn’t seem like someone who was interested by the exploration of the necessity of money in marriages: he was far too used to having wealth to appreciate its importance.

“‘Course not.”

“Then we won’t talk about Austen,” Larka said sensibly.

“Nonsense, just because I don’t appreciate Regency novels doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate you talking about them.”

Larka turned to eye him warily.

Sirius eyed her back, “But we _are_ going to talk about _something_.”

“Well…” Larka faltered.

Sirius continued staring at her resolutely.

Larka let out a long sigh, like she was spring cleaning her lungs, and finally said, “This is hard.”

“Hard?” he grinned lewdly.

“Hard for me and Novia,” Larka said, resolute to be serious, “You realize that me fraternizing—yes that’s the word she’d used— with you isn’t great?”

He snorted. “Why ever not? It’s your freedom to be friends with whoever you want.”

“Yes, but friendship, like all relationships, means thinking about the other person as well. As trivial as you might think it is, and as childish as I might think it is, it _does_ hurt her, my best friend, so I shouldn’t.” She tried to avoid upsetting him over his own fight with his friends, but she had no idea what to avoid.

“Why not?” Sirius repeated like a petulant child.

“Because she doesn’t want me to.”

“What are you, a slave?”

“No, a friend. Besides, I feel like I’m to blame for her thinking you were in love with her as well. And I’ve wronged _you_ as well.”

“What?” he was clearly surprised by this confession.

“Well yes. It’s stupid, I know, but I feel guilty about the whole thing, so it’s easier to avoid you.”

“What the _hell_ are you talking about?”

Larka sighed again, “You were right, you didn’t _have_ to fall in love with Novia. I supposed that because I love her, I assume that you will too. But I see now that’s wrong. It's probably a good thing in the long run anyway. A good-looking and rich bloke like you so easily falls in love with a pretty girl, and when bored, so easily falls out of love.”

Sirius cried out indignantly in protest.

Larka ignored him and carried on, “Not that there's anything fundamentally wrong with that, it's just—it's just…well a little unfair, but that’s how it is. It’s not your fault. You probably didn’t even realize how much you hurt her. You don’t realize how much you always hurt other people. Not that it should matter to you—it would be nice of you to care, but it’s not your obligation, I guess. I mean, not that I really know you, but you must be looking for love just like everybody else? I mean, look at the way you look at James, as if he singlehandedly hung the sun, the moon, _and_ the stars altogether. So that makes me doubly wrong, to have expected a glossed-over fairy tale to happen simply because I wanted it to.” Another sigh. “Anyway,” she stopped her rambling, “my point is, I guess, I’m sorry.”

“Oh,” he said simply.

“I had been way too wrapped up in my own thoughts to realize what Novia or you were thinking. Because of course you had your own thoughts. It’s not easy for anybody, is it? I mean, you’ve had enough of people deciding things for you, I’m sure. I know you don’t like talking about you family, and I can’t say I know what it’s like, but I know what you didn’t have the best childhood, and that’s a sad thought. Not that, you know, that makes you damaged somehow… Well, not _damaged_ damaged, as in like, you need fixing. But still. It’s like, well, it’s like not having a broomstick or your own room or something. Obviously not that trivial—just, well, really sad, but not really fundamental. Like, as a person. _Ugh_ ,” Larka was so frustrated with herself, “I’m such the _worst_ apologizer.”

“Can’t say I’ve heard many apologies,” Sirius said, his voice light but strained.

Well that killed the conversation. Larka felt so bad for him, resorting to making jokes about things that obviously pained him, like a cancer patient forced to laugh about chemo. She was, like she said, pants at this, so she just stopped talking altogether.

After a long time, Sirius got up and said, “Let me walk you back to the castle.”

It was late, and she hadn’t done any part of her homework, and she was _freezing_ , so she said yes.

When they reached the Gryffindor tower, Sirius said again, “Same time tomorrow, yeah?” and made off before she could respond.

-.-.-.-

He was going crazy, Sirius was sure. There was nobody to talk to: he didn’t really have any friends besides Prongs, Moony, and Wormtail. The blokes on the Quidditch team were Prongs’ buds first. Even Arlene, who had always been more than happy in his company, ducked out of the way if she saw him coming. The rest of the blokes at Hogwarts wanted a drinking and japing buddy but none of his moroseness, and the birds, well, he had never wanted to give them what they wanted.

It felt like he was back in his childhood.

He had been left on his own for most of his life. Ever since he could remember, he had been by himself in that fucking House, a lone lord over the basement floor. Father mostly ignored him and slinked off to their castle whenever he could, a skulking, sullen shadow in the East Wing, eyeing the tourists flocking to the West Wing with detachment and gin. He saw Father infrequently, and Mother less so, but whenever Mother came—

He used to need the ticking of clocks to fall asleep, so his room was packed full of ornate clocks tuned to the same split second. Each morning he woke up to the entire room vibrating as the clocks struck. There were a dozen people in service of the young heir, but they were like familiars from ghost stories, rarely appearing in his way except at mealtimes, when he sat in the cavernous dining hall. He spent his younger days studying in the library (the study was locked and not for him, even though Father never used it). He read and wrote with his feet dangling from the high backed chair underneath the lines of bookshelves so tall that his neck cramped when he tried to locate books. The large space was lit by a Goliath of a chandelier in the middle, in the shape of a ship, winking at him and promising Homeric adventures if only he could set sail on it across the Thames. He didn’t know why, but he always thought adventure was across the water, and not over the land. The library was also the only place where he was treated to human interaction: his tutors came here, but their tutelage was on paper, and other than checking his progress, they left him to his own device.

He was forbidden to leave the House, but the stone walls and dusty tomes could only hold him for so long, and in a few years, he wondered what was outside. After a while, he realized that there was nothing preventing him from slipping out; after all, the servants were just servants, and could not rise above their station to tell him what to do.

Once when he was six, Sirius ventured beyond the back yard. He walked on land further than ever before, and eventually entered what he now knew to be downtown.

What a place!—Sirius had never seen so many people before! All dressed so funnily too! There was a long row of tented booths, and there was a lot of shuffling and yelling and bartering. Sirius quickly grabbed a peach from such a booth, but it felt fuzzy and honestly he only recognized it as a peach from illustrations. He tossed it aside, rubbing his fingers to get rid of the strange feel of its skin. But quickly his curiosity burned away to boredom, because there was nothing to do. He had no gold on him, and he was six and smart enough to know what ‘money’ was used for. The people all looked at him funnily, and it first puzzled Sirius then angered him.

A thin youth, only a head taller than him, rammed into his shoulder forcibly, making him crash into the ground. Sirius, appalled and dazed, sat on the ground for a few seconds before jumping up at lunging at the youth, instinctually driven to fight this boorish youth.

The youth dodged easily. Sirius saw something glistening in his hand and looking down, noticed that his onyx cuff links were gone. “You!” Sirius pointed at him with a finger trembling in shock and outrage, “Give that back!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the youth said, grinning crookedly.

“You—you took my cuff links!”

“No I didn’t.”

“Yes you did! I saw it!”

The youth rolled his eyes and was about to walk away.

Sirius took out his wand and cursed him. It was the first time that he used a spell on another person (he would later learn it was a Dark spell; that most of his spells were Dark Arts), and Mother would later have to deal with the Ministry, but he didn’t know. The youth twitched on the ground with violent spasms like the spiders that Sirius used to practice on, and he was proud of his wandwork.

But people were looking at him funnily again, a few even screaming and running away.

Sirius shook his hair to get rid of the uncomfortable sensation that he couldn’t name, and ran back to Grimmauld Place.

He never came back to the farmer’s market again (he read about that later), preferring the company of candelabras that dragged his shadows big and tall, and the heavy books in which war and earthquakes happened without causing a hair on his head to stir. He did, however, begin a habit of talking to himself, which troubled one of his tutors*******.

At age nine, Mother started bringing him to attend to certain important family events, such as the annual dinner. He saw more of Mother, but less of Father, since if Father was at the House, he was to be confined to the Room. He had trouble remembering things at this stage, especially a year after Mother started—

But he did remember Prongs, who shoved and pushed and bullied himself into Sirius’s life. Prongs had never met anybody who did not like him, and so he naturally took this little glowering, verbose boy to be his best mate after a vicious fight on the train. Sirius was thankful for this one friend when he was all of a sudden thrust into the thick of Gryffindor, all of whom looked at him much like the townspeople did so many years ago. Except Prongs. And then Wormtail. And then Moony. Living together with other people was hard, but the hardest part was living with Prongs, because Prongs found out his episodes and what they were induced by and then —

By fourteen, he had also discovered that girls blushed very easily when he looked their way, and this time, while he found them strange, they found him attractive. By fifteen he knew what attracted them to him and curiosity again turned to ennui.

He had never made the effort to gain friends, and what friendly advances he faced, he had pushed away warily, preferring the company of known elements—the candelabra, the books, the Marauders.

But that also meant that he was now, once again, in the company of his own mind, without even the candles, and even without an audience he must speak. Left to his own, he would go crazy, he knew, or even crazier if he already was.

When he saw Larka alone as well, a hunched figure over books so hefty that they dwarfed her, making her look like a small child, her feet, dangling back and forth on the high backed chair in the dining hall, her hair illuminated by the soft, yellow glow of candelabras lining the walls, the quietude brokered by the rhythmic ticking of his watch—Sirius was hit with a wave of déjà vu, as if he was looking through the lens of years at himself, small and relatively content, before he knew what human companionship was.

Larka was not anything like him, he knew, but if he must have someone to talk to, then Larka wasn’t the worst choice, was she?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * Larka J. Roxburgh would have gladly paid upwards to five Sickles to keep Sirius A. Black away—Larka was not profligate.
> 
> ** Sirius A. Black would have called out the lie of ‘not having steam’ had it been any other person. To Sirius, yelling was as natural as the Merlin-given air. Mother yelled almost incessantly in private. Father yelled when Mother was out of earshot. Regulus yelled even as a baby. Kreacher yelled at him exclusively. Yelling came intuitively to him as well, something that happened so easily even before he had notions of rebellion and righteousness. It had never occurred to him to approach anger and disappointment another way. Yet in front of Larka J. Roxburgh, with her clear, wide eyes boring right into his, her firm, round cheeks pushed upwards slightly by a smile, the way she always looked when she was trying to explain something apparent—Sirius found it hard to say anything. It was bizarre. Larka was bizarre. (And didn’t he love bizarre things.)
> 
> *** Larka J. Roxburgh had an eating habit that some might have been deemed unhealthy, but there was great satisfaction in breaking the regime of a healthy diet. A famous witch had once said “Nothing tastes as good as being skinny,” but Larka begged to differ. Although she applauded those who liked the taste, Larka herself was partial to too many sweets to fully appreciate it. And her theory was that it made sense to eat the most when she was young and her metabolism was high—she would save the healthiness to a later stage in life. Novia disagreed with this theory passionately, saying that she must look the best during the best years of her life, but Larka wondered what ‘best’ meant.
> 
> **** Indeed, the Bludger in question here had an on-going, long-time feud with Sirius A. Black. It had a been a hopeful and youthful Bludger when it first started its schooling, determined to be a star despite the lack of support and even tears on its family’s end. It was confident, however, that it had all the qualities of a top-notch Bludger, and would one day make it to the big games. First day after being enrolled at Hogwarts, though, it went to its very first Hogwarts match and was completely, utterly, embarrassingly destroyed. Not destroyed in the literal sense, but in every emotional and psychological sense. And this destruction was recurring—it grew to view every Gryffindor match as the bane of its existence. However, soon it realized that the Gryffindor Beater—one Sirius A. Black—had an odd habit of going particularly for it. Furious, it declared war (wordlessly, of course, for Bludgers had no words) on him and a five year war begun.
> 
> ***** There were many tactics that Sirius A. Black employed in order to avoid post-Quidditch celebrations until most people had the decency to shower. While he shared victorious moods with the common folk, he rose above the plebeian when it came to personal hygiene. This was unusual for a teenage boy, but quite expected for a young pureblood gentleman. Denying one’s heritage had its limitations.
> 
> ****** Sirius A. Black always had a lurking suspicion that Larka J. Roxburgh preferred Remus J. Lupin’s company to his own. Not that, you know, Sirius wanted to compete with Remus. His friendships meant the world to him— anything and everything that ever existed in this solipsistic life of his. Without them, he had nobody who understood what it meant to return home to being hated and ignored, nobody who understood that was actually an improvement; he had no ideals, no purpose in life beyond the immediate pleasure of making his friends laugh and having a laugh himself.
> 
> ******* Mister Ethelbert was very worried about the mental development of Sirius A. Black. He did not think a solitary environment with virtually no contact with the outside world was healthy to a child (or indeed any human being). Yet upon bringing to attention to Madam Black the recent problem of her son talking to himself in monologues alternating between the didactic and the dramatic, the Madam asked if it posed a health risk. Mister Ethelbert said that his expertise was European History, not general health. The Madam then said since he was aware that being the case, then please only alert her in matters of European History. Mister Ethelbert would have loved to report this borderline child abuse to the authorities (what authorities were immune to the influence of one of the oldest pureblood families?), but he had a wife and two children going to school soon.


	9. Our Estranged Isles

**Chapter** **7**

**Our Estranged Isles**

The next night, Larka took her basketful of food and stepped on the frozen Quidditch pit again. She had packed sweets and, as an afterthought, filled a container with a variety of meats and side dishes because she didn’t see Sirius at the dinner table again but she had no idea what he preferred. Not a shred of homework had been done yesterday, so it was only logical for her to make another attempt, she told herself.

-.-.-.-

“Oy is that _Black_ there? Sneaking around at curfew, eh?” It was Rosier, a year his senior, wandering out of the Slytherin slimy dungeons (just like their slimy greasy _faces_ , ha, although truth be told Rosier was trained to have good personal hygiene as well). Rosier and two of his buddies were tucked in between the stone wall and the tall hedges lining the outside. Definitely up to no good, which Sirius would have approved had it be a normal, well-adjusted Gryffindor bloke.

“You wankers see this?” Rosier turned back to the other two still crouching down, hiding something with their thick bodies. Rosier elbows one to make his point, “Fucking _Lord_ Black here! You listening to me?”

“Stop _pushing_ ,” one of them gruffly said, “You’ll make us _spill_.”

“Well _I_ bought it didn’t I?” Rosier said haughtily, zooming his twitchy, dilated eyes back on Sirius.

Sirius had started backing away. Rosier was clearly high out of his mind; Sirius didn’t want to be here for this.

“Stop right there. Mate, us first sons ought to look for each other eh?” Rosier winked like he just told some big hilarious joke, muffling his own giggles with the bottom of his untucked shirt that he tugged up to his mouth. Upper. “Hey you want a line? Or pop some mandies? Hard to come by quality, I’ve got a source from Mexico. C’mon, if Potter doesn’t do it for you we will.”

“Sod off,” Sirius warned.

“What was that Black, _pansy_ off? _Oh_ you’ve never done it before have you?” Rosier’s eyes widened and he sneered, “I don’t believe it, a _Black_ not fucking his own mind? What, you _scared_?”

“Did I not make myself _bloody clear_ ,” Sirius snarled, whipping out his wand, its crackling and faintly glowing, “Sod. _Off_.”

One of the crouching boys come over and gripped Rosier’s shoulder, “Back off,” he told Sirius, clearly more used to the dosage, then tightened his hand on Rosier, “Get a _hold_ of yourself.”

“Bloody nutter, that one,” Rosier mumbled as he staggered away, “What’s up _his_ arse; we’re the _same_ , we might as be _twins_ if you think about it. I was being nice; you can’t say _that_ about me every day.”

Sirius could barely keep himself breathing as he fled—his hand, his vision, his whole body was shaking uncontrollably. He sneaked past the front gate, disappearing into the night and feeling its cloak slip over him. He ran to the Quidditch pitch, bashed himself a couple of times climbing the bleachers, trying to reach that place where nobody could see him, could touch him, could stuff him up with _things_ again.

He was still convulsing when he reached the opening, and dammit _she_ was there already, with her stupid basket and stupid face and— _fuck_ did he smell _fried chicken_?

-.-.-.-

Larka sat there in awe as Sirius all but _inhaled_ all that food in the blink of an eye. Well he left the Brussels sprouts and the collard greens, both of which she could appreciate even cold.

He hadn’t bothered to ask her before diving in and tearing a fried drumstick with all the ferocity of a cave man, and Larka found it kind of funny, despite how important she thought manners were. When he was finished, he fell backwards onto his back and sprawled there in a heap of boneless flesh. Kind of like a pudding, Larka thought as she packed away the leftover greens for composting later. Sirius was different tonight, more mellow, not trying to burn through a lifetime in a day. Or perhaps it was the exile that brought this out of him.

They stayed like that for a good while. Larka wondered if Sirius was aware of her being there. Perhaps he would prefer her to leave, but she worried that he might fall asleep and freeze—his thin down coat didn’t look a worthy opponent for the night.

On the ground, Sirius made a gruff growl. He strained on his left side until he picked out something with two of his fingers from the right pocket of his jeans. It was a pack of cigarettes, a slanted ribbon of two-toned blue running across the front; it said ‘Embassy Regal’ in thin letters. Larka had half a mind to tell him that cigarettes were bad for him, but concluded that he knew that already, so she silently watched him take one from the half-empty pack.

“Want a fag?” he asked out of politeness, as if he just remembered that she was also a person.

“No thanks,” Larka rejected predictably.

Sirius moved like he was going to shrug, but decided that was too much effort. He reached down to his jeans again for his wand before he stopped, and with a faint grin that reminded Larka of how spirited he usually was, he said, “Hey, here’s a trick.”

Then he raised the cigarette to his mouth and held it between his teeth, sucking on the end, the left corner of his mouth quirked up with some secret mirth, like he was sure she would be impressed.

And she was.

The cigarette slowly lit up in ambers, burning a bright hot orange before subduing into a redder light. Wandless magic. Wandless _wordless_ magic. For the Love of Merlin and Life Everlasting. Of course Sirius would figure out a nonverbal spell for lighting his cigarettes—it was so silly that it was perfect. She said so as much and was rewarded with a half-hearted chuckle.

That was strange, Larka thought, usually he was much more receptive of praise. “It is _very_ impressive,” she stressed, “how do you do it?”

He shrugged, “I don’t know actually, it just sort of happens on its own*. Not like I can do anything else.”

“Have you shown the Headmaster or one of the professors?”

He laughed, as if it was a funny question.

She supposed he hadn’t; otherwise there must be a lot of fuss over this. She started to ask him why not, before realizing that no, Sirius did not want people to know, of course. But why? Wouldn’t he want the limelight, maybe be part of something important like the revival of wandless magic in England, of perhaps leave a legacy in history books —oh, she paused. He didn’t think it was important.

“ _I_ think that’s the cat’s pyjamas,” she whispered conspiringly.

Sirius cocked his head and seemed to ready to retort but changed his mind at the last second and instead mumbled, “Thanks, I suppose,” looking almost shy.

Larka ignored the strange urge to take this new Sirius and shelter him, preserve him.

-.-.-.-

“I still feel guilty for ‘fraternization’,” Larka confessed uneasily to Sirius.

“Nonsense, we’re just ‘hanging out’**, as the saying goes,” Sirius said in his best casually assertive voice.

Larka didn’t know any such saying but did not inquire after it.

-.-.-.-

“You know what, we’re _just_ like—oh what are their names again? Romeo and Juliet!” Sirius announced. He stabbed a slice of today’s selection of pork loins and started biting off straight from his fork-lance.

“What?” At least he didn’t use his hands, although she had prepared a wad of paper napkins in the case that he did; one could never tell with him.

“They’re lovers from this Muggle guy that Remus talks about sometimes, supposedly really iconic in their funny little world.”

“I know what _Romeo and Juliet_ is, Sirius.” Larka wasn’t sure if this was inappropriate flirting or just inappropriate.

“Well, all the better! Don’t you agree? Clandestine rendezvous under the stars, star-crossed descendants of opposing Families, casting aside their respective ideologies.”

“I’m not sure if that’s the right analogy. My family doesn’t really have an ideology.”

“Of course not _proper_ ,” Sirius grinned again, his teeth flashing white, “we wouldn’t ever kill ourselves, what a loony thing to do!”

-.-.-.-

“So what are you thinking of doing when you graduate?” he had asked her out of the blue one day, picking at a patch of matted, crunchy grass.

Larka did not see this question coming. Even she knew of Sirius’s reputation of being dismal at planning ahead in chess (and everything else not pranks), but she supposed only the dead did not think of the future, even if in passing. “I don’t know, find a job somewhere, or go to school again if I can’t.”

“Doing what? Do you know?”

Larka thought she had figured out what he was trying to say. “It’s okay to not know, I think. Do you?”

“Mhm. Aurors? It seemed like something I’d be good at, running recklessly into danger and keeping score of who got the most bad people. But mostly because James wants to do it. Now I don’t know anymore, obviously.”

“You have time to figure it out,” Larka said the most empty words she had in a long time.

“Oh please. Time is shrinking,” he said cryptically, “to decide on which side you stand.”

“You actually sound _just_ like Professor Sinistra in our last Divination class, verbatim,” Larka stated seriously.

Sirius laughed, “Oh you.”

“People always say just do what you like, but it’s hard to find what you like, right?” Larka knew that she liked her field of study, but it wasn’t a hard bet for livelihood, which at some point she must consider, since she didn’t come from money. She had no idea of what she liked beyond desserts and the elegance of the night sky.

“I like Quidditch, but I can’t make it to the professional league.” Sirius was aware of his shortcomings? Sirius was aware that he _had_ shortcomings? “I like lounging and libations, does that count? Certainly seems like a certified Black profession,” he grumbled.

“I like taking classes,” Larka shamefully. It’s not something she freely said because it was just _weird_.

“That _is_ a peculiar taste,” Sirius said, “but classes aren’t that bad. They’re boring, but there’s a lot worse than just boring.”

Larka raised her eyebrows, “There is?” to Sirius Black?

“Like being _bad_ at something.”

“Like chess?” Larka asked dryly.

He stared into the distance. “Chess isn’t that bad. Anything that can be fixed by cheating or bribery isn’t a problem.”

-.-.-.-

“Oh you should have _seen_ McGonagall!” Sirius made out in between bellowing, hiccupping laughs. “Merlin’s Pregnancy Beard, I thought she was going to rip _both_ of their bloody _ears_ off!” Sirius was all too delighted by the show he witnessed in the hallway. Despite avoiding the Dining Hall and the Common Room like the plague, it appeared the Sirius _did_ still live in the castle.

“I heard that she did seem… cross,” Larka said conservatively.

“ _Cross_? If they had McGonagall in the medieval times, they would have no need for torture devices. One look. All it takes.”As

“Doesn’t matter how many looks,” Larka said, “Algernon won’t confess because he didn’t do it.”

“What? Then who spray-painted that occult circle in dear Minnie’s office?”

“It’s not an occult thing, it’s an old Norman setup making a plea for more rain,” Larka shrugged, she’d recognized the picture Novia drew from the book she was referencing for her paper on _Pagan Rituals in a Non-Pagan Setting_ , “Weather spell.”

“I guess it could be Old Magic,” Sirius shrugged, “Would hardly diminish her fury though. Why do you say he didn’t do it?”

“It’s all a rather convoluted plot—”

“I _do_ love a good tale of courtly intrigue with bumbling amateurs!” Sirius clapped his hands.

“—to frame Flynn.”

“ _Flynn_?”

“Yes. The plan was that since Algernon is Flynn’s little brother, he’s the weakest point to get to Flynn. McGonagall was intended to hear the ‘passing gossip’ of Algernon boasting of the prank. When McGonagall questioned Algernon, of course Flynn will jump out in defence. The ‘amateurs’ had set it up so that Alice Travers saw the image of Flynn fleeing the staff quarters right around when it happened—either a disguise or a glamour, not sure—and Alice is known to be an honest girl, so the professors will definitely believe her. But Emil Lowell had actually been talking to Flynn then, so he’ll come out and say that—but you know Emil’s reputation… he clearly does not deserve the sort of bullying, but it’s true that he’s figuring out how to be queer. The point is, this incident distracts Flynn from his final exams, falsely ‘outs’ him as a queer, and diminishes Flynn’s standing with the professors, a low blow given, you know, how the Greengrasses are.”

“So these not-so-bumbling amateurs, why do they hate Flynn Greengrass so much? I mean, for a Slytherin, he’s never really bothered anybody, not to mention how _bland_ he is.”

“Oh, he rejected someone’s invitation to the Ball.”

“You’re pulling my leg. That can’t be _it_?”

“Plus, somebody else got rejected by Judith, you know, that girl in Ravenclaw.” Sirius quirked an eyebrow to tell her that no, he didn’t know. “The one who looks stunning in sweater dresses.” Still the quirked brow. “Ugh, the one with large breasts.”

“Oh _her_!”

Larka rolled her eyes, “She went to the Ball with Flynn.”

Sirius frowned, “Holy shit snacks, all that trouble. How do you know so much?” He narrowed his eyes suspiciously***.

Larka shrugged, “I overheard people talking. I think people don’t notice me, or they think I’m harmless.”

“Little do they know,” Sirius said gleefully, “that you’re in secret alliance _entre nous_! Keep this up and I’ll have enough blackmail material to live comfortably the rest of my frightfully roguish life!”

Larka looked at him oddly. She had a feeling that their idea of ‘comfortable’ was different.

-.-.-.-

The observant Remus was bound to notice something eventually, maybe in her increased tendency to nod off or how much she food she put away nightly in a basket, like Little Red Riding Hood off to see the wolf. Novia hadn’t asked, because Novia was usually lightly snoring by the time she left the dorms, but Remus had one day questioned her subtly. Undoubtedly out of interest vested in his ex-friend, which was good news for Sirius. Larka changed the subject quickly, and Remus never approached her again.

-.-.-.-

Speaking of Novia, the guilt had abated: not disappeared, but like tide ebbing to a shallow pool around her ankles instead of bearing down with three hundred sixty degree pressure as if she was diving. One could get used to anything eventually; must be how murderers lived with themselves years after the fact.

-.-.-.-

“So why _don’t_ you like Novia? I mean, I’m not accusing you, or saying that you should, but…” Larka paused, “it sounded as if she did everything perfectly, just the way you would like it.”

Sirius snorted, “She has a full _Sketches by Boz_ character study on me?”

“Perhaps.” Basically.

“What makes you think,” Sirius said with a hint of a sneer in his voice, “that all the other birds don’t do that for me?”

Larka said matter-of-factly, “Because usually beautiful, wilful girls don’t cater to other people’s whims.”

Sirius shrugged, “You’d think that, wouldn’t you? It’s weird, but a lot of times girls just… I don’t know, they’re more willing to do stuff to please blokes than vice versa I guess.”

Larka wouldn’t know, but she supposed that few blokes deliberately developed an interest in romantic comedies and shopping and gossiping. Not that some girls didn’t like Quidditch or beer or rock n’ roll, or boys didn’t read the full collection of Jane Austen—Merlin, the biggest gossip in school was this boy in Ravenclaw—but it was the effort to please, to share common ground, to spend time together. “So you mean the way Novia behaved wasn’t special?” she asked, curious to hear a boy’s perspective.

“No, not that. Novia was indeed an ace bird to have around. But, I don’t know, it’s cool to have a sexy bloke-bird who’s into everything that I’m into, but I had James and Remus and Peter, why do I need her? It got boring is all, and eventually she’d start making demands—just like she was going to in that pub. Didn’t see a reason to waste everybody’s time.”

It was bizarre for Sirius to be so candid, or so thoughtful, but perhaps that was the magic of night, or perhaps everybody had been wrong about him.

Then he sighed, “Wouldn’t be bad to have her around now, I suppose. But she wouldn’t want to be around me now, not me like this.”

With a jolt, Larka realized that he was right.

-.-.-.-

“Your friend Novia always made a point to say that she prefers men who’ve been ‘around’; experienced so they’re good at what they’re doing. Is that what girls think?”

“I think,” Larka said carefully, trying to block any possible mental images of either Novia or Sirius or _both_ , “that it depends on the girl.”

Sirius gave a thoughtful sort of grunt as he puffed out smoke, “But she looked constipated any time James talked about my previous conquests.”

“I also think,” Larka said sadly, “that any girl would look constipated if they were thought of as ‘conquests’.”

“It wasn’t about that, she was—you know that I _don’t_ think of them like that, right?” he asked pressingly all of a sudden.

Larka didn’t want to be judgmental, but it was hard not to be.

“I know you don’t believe me, but the idea of ‘conquest’ reminds me of the collection of shrunken heads on the mantle in our drawing room. A line of thick, brittle bones polished lovingly by our house elves, each one uniform and yet just slightly different…”

Larka was prone to believing people easily, so she said, “Oh I believe you, I can see how it would be hard to clean after.”

Sirius gave her a lopsided grin, “Right on the money.”

-.-.-.-

“I lost my virginity at the positively _ancient_ age of _fourteen_ , despite what the rumours say.”

The rumours all but claimed that Sirius had been born without his virginity. “Interesting,” Larka said. Not really. It was private and Larka didn’t want to know and it actually kind of bothered her—oh, he was still talking.

“—not something one _loses_ , really. I’ve always thought that phrase was weird. But it was kinda of embarrassing. That’s the thing, right? Nobody tells you that sex is awkward and embarrassing, with lots of limbs and manoeuvring. It’s like a sport that nobody teaches you but you’re supposed to be a star at just innately—”

Larka didn’t say anything because she was blushing too furiously and her throat was dry. She had always been the sort to skip through certain passages in _Lady Chatterley's Lover_. Although she appreciated the idea of female liberation and recognized the equal importance of feminine sexuality—but high concepts were one thing, listening to a boy (one that she secretly found very attractive at that) talking about his own sexual experiences was _quite something else_.

“—but anyway, James used to laugh at me—he did it at thirteen, the wanker—but then he met flaming Evans and _bam_ he wasn’t getting any no more. Besides, Sybil’s a solid bird; she didn’t even snicker although I could tell she wanted to. Nobody tells you that it’s kind of weirdly hollow too. I mean, it’s brill while you’re at it, much better than doing it yourself, but then you’ve to pick up all these tossed knickers and of course clean up the muck and all these awkward silences and there’s always _small talk_ for some reason, and when you walk out—”

“Why are you telling me this?” Larka said weakly.

“Merlin’s _fancy lace garters_ ,” Sirius jerked, “you’re still _awake_?”

“Uh, yes?” Larka said nervously.

He quickly calmed down, “In that case. Listen up, it isn’t every day that Sirius Altair Black shares his sexy-time lessons. Just… make sure to do it with somebody who cares enough to do it _right_ your first time, yeah? At least on a real bed.”

“So avoid people like you?” Larka let slip out, half mortified and half amused.

Sirius became very quiet all a sudden.

Larka cringed—that wasn’t very nice of her, although it was very honest. When these two virtues conflicted, which one ought she to follow? It was a grand philosophical question, wasn’t it? Which virtue was, innately, more important? Which came down to really was the feelings of other people more important than one’s principles? Could she quantify how much feelings against how fundamental it challenged her core principle?

“Yeah, people like me,” Sirius said abruptly, when Larka thought he wasn’t going to speak anymore.

-.-.-.-

“Are you going away for the long weekend?” he asked two weeks before the actual weekend.

“Yes, what about you?”

“Staying here of course. I hate being left alone,” Sirius whined. Larka did not ask him why he didn’t go home then. “I also hate having to understand that people have lives outside of rotating around me.”

Larka was sympathetic if not empathetic. “I have to go home, Sirius, you know that.”

“So where is ‘home’?”

“Guildford. Well, technically, Cheviot Hills, this incredibly remote place in Northumberland that I’m sure you’ve never heard of before,” she was eager to distract his sullenness, “We still have our cottage and I was born there, but we moved to Guildford when I was halfway fifteen because my Mum wanted to be closer to Uncle Bob—and the city . One of my cousins is close to my parents. She goes to the local uni so she’s a much better daughter than I am to them. She eats dinner with my parents because her mum’s really busy and her dad, my uncle, can’t cook , and sometimes she even spends her nights there in my room. It’s nice that my parents have something to do.”

“You don’t feel like she’s replacing you?”

Larka was surprised; the thought had never occurred to her before. “But she’s not me.” Then frowning, she asked, “Should I be?”

“Oh Larka,” Sirius said expressively.

-.-.-.-

“I’ve been a right twat to loads of people, doesn’t that bother you?”

“Well,” Larka chose her words carefully, “I suppose as long as you aren’t to people that I care about, then I don’t have grounds to be bothered.”

“Novia,” Sirius said simply, “although I _still_ maintain that it’s _not_ my fault. Not entirely.”

“I know,” Larka said. In the end, it was nobody’s.

“So why not?”

Larka shrugged, “I guess because you came into my life before the other people that you’ve arsed off did. I guess I’m not that good of a person. I imagine that, oh, I guess people like Headmaster Dumbledore, they are the _good_ people, the ones who can be objective. That’s why they’re given power. But for people like my Dad, well whenever my Mum is wrong in a fight with other people, he still supports her. I guess the small people—like me—choose their friends and which side of the battlefield they stand on.”

“Battlefield?”

She hesitated before saying slowly, “A lot of times, having so many people around feels like a battlefield to me.”

Sirius gave a thoughtful hum, “I guess you’re not too far off the mark.”

-.-.-.-

“I’m a tosser, a real, bloody, daft, gormless, stupid _tosser_ , you know.”

Larka prudently did not respond to that. She could smell the alcohol, stinging the back of her nose, before she even reached the top of the bleachers tonight. Leaving Sirius alone on a vastly empty campus for the entirety of a long weekend was dangerous as she suspected, and she felt responsible even though she wasn’t.

“Even when I _try_ not to be one, I end up being a tosser anyway,” he continued to slur.

“We can’t help but mess up,” Larka said quietly, thinking of her own failings.

Sirius barked a bitter laugh, “Yeah, some shit like ‘to err is human’ right? Fuck that. I don’t wanna be human. Just, _fuck_.”

“Yeah,” Larka agreed softly, “fuck.”

-.-.-.-

It was the third night in a role that he’d been drinking, and Larka took away the bottle and threw it away before he could overpower her. The air was immediately permeated with the thick scent of spiced rum, heady and burning.

“Fuck _you_ ,” he roared.

“I don’t know what to do if you get alcohol poisoning or choke on your vomit; I heard that can actually happen and it sounds disgusting.”

Sirius shuddered, rage momentarily forgotten in the shrunken memory of his drunken stupor. “It _iz_. Prongs almost—pretty shure I did too. Bless Moony—oh Moony, Moooo.”****

Larka patted his back as he turned around and buried his head in his arms, because what else was one to do when a boy was crying? “You are not the simple sum of your mistakes, Sirius,” she said to the boy who would not remember it come morning.

-.-.-.-

“What do you do when you hurt someone, you know, real badly? That you wish you could take it back, but like everything in this fucking fucked up world, you can’t?” he was more sober this time (for now), only a small flask of undetermined liquor in his grasp and the second cigarette of the night.

Larka could not help the human curiosity creep up in her—just _what_ did he do that was so bad? It didn’t seem like anything could have broken their ring of friendship. What was sacred and permanent in this world if not this? Yet what she _could_ do was prevent her curiosity from being hurtful. So she said, “You hope that they are the better person.”

Sirius mumbled, “They are. Better. Much. The kindest, gentlest, nicest, smartest person that I’ve ever known.”

“He might forgive you then,” Larka said, close to promising forgiveness because the fragility of Sirius was making her heart ache in a funny way.

He snorted, “How would you know.”

Even though it was more of an accusation than a question, Larka still answered, “Because Remus is the kindest, gentlest, nicest, smartest person that you’ve ever known.”

He turned to her in surprise, his bright grey eyes widened a smidgeon, “How do you know?”

This time it _was_ a question, but Larka didn’t want to answer it. “Sirius, do you know what the biggest pitfall is for brilliant people?”

“What?”

“Thinking everybody else is stupid.”

-.-.-.-

“It’s weird talking about… _you know_.”

“No Sirius, despite what you think, I’m not a mind reader.”

Sirius gave a dramatic gasp, “You don’t _say_?”

Larka rolled her eyes (a recently acquired habit) but was secretly pleased: Sirius being morose was kind of a usual sight, but extended periods of depression wasn’t good for anybody. She was glad to see that he was still capable of his usual theatrics. “I really don’t know what you mean half the time.”

“Only half? I must work on this enigmatic Seer persona of mine.”

Larka allowed herself to smile: it was too beautiful of a night to be serious. The sky was clear and if she squinted, the stars lined up to dance like a troupe of traveling minstrels, the kind that one read about in old epics. The air was fresh and bright and crisp, and even the shadows of trees and the stadium seemed more saturated, discovering a colour darker than black. Spring had softened the edge in the coldness, and besides there weren’t yet mosquitos in this temperature. Everything felt so _magical_ , in the most literal sense of the word. Leave it to Hogwarts, Larka thought, to make the night—a daily occurrence—so utterly magnificent. It was as if all the magic seeped into the grounds, the soil, the stones was being slowly let out, a soft breath at a time, until its aura wrapped around them and transformed darkness into the glorious night.

-.-.-.-

“What I had meant the other day was,” he tried again the next day, “it’s weird to talk about _feelings_.” He said the word like it was both forbidden and sordid.

“I understand that most boys don’t usually talk about what they’re feeling easily or frequently.”

“No, it’s not even that.” He sighed. “It’s just weird, okay?”

Larka accepted that, “Uh huh.”

“I’ve never talked about feelings to people. I don’t expect people to listen, and I don’t want James to know.”

The darkness helped; at least it definitely helped her. They were both such intensely private people, despite their personalities differing so much. “Well it’s good that you have a hole in the hill for divulging Midas’s donkey ears.”

“You know,” Sirius said, glancing at her sideways with a twisted expression, “you have _so_ much potential to be a saucy minx.”

“Hmm,” Larka said.

-.-.-.-

“Can I ask you something? Why were you so intent on talking to me?” Larka asked one day, uncharacteristically bold. “You have enough people in your fan club and you don’t seem to be bothered by other people disliking you.”

“Ah ha!” he cried triumphantly, “I knew there’s a fan club for me exclusively!”

Of _course_ he missed the point, Larka just wasn’t sure if he did so deliberately. On a second thought, of course he did it on purpose. Sirius wasn’t dumb. There were occasions where it seemed like he lacked social acumen, but that was only because he didn’t care. “It’s a figure of speech.”

“It’s called SBAC if you want to join. Given its charter, I figure I can get you a voting position,” he said wryly.

“It is? You know?”

“Bit underground, but there isn’t anything exciting in this castle that happens without me knowing about it,” he said haughtily.

Larka exercised her new hobby of rolling her eyes.

“Besides, I keep an ear out about me. Plenty of attacks that I’ve avoided by being diligent.”

“Attacks?” Who would attack Sirius? Raging mad ex-girlfriends? Raging mad boyfriends of ex-girlfriends?

“A Black in Gryffindor who’s friendly with Muggle-borns and wears Muggle clothes? It’s like I define the term ‘blood traitor’.”

“Oh.”

“Black training can be useful,” he said darkly.

Larka didn’t like the way he sounded. But she also didn’t like what he was saying about Hogwarts. She felt very small and very ignorant, and then very much wanted to give him a hug.

Larka was nothing if not good at curbing impulses.

-.-.-.-

“About what you asked,” Sirius said two days afterwards.

Larka had long realized that when Sirius didn’t want to say something, he deflected with silliness. Then took his time in coming to terms with speaking about himself, something rather foreign to him. So she waited patiently, even now.

“I came to you because you didn’t like me.”

She frowned, “There are plenty of people who don’t like you, no offense.” Sirius was a very polarizing individual—people usually either adored him or hated him.

“Yeah, but few who honestly don’t have an opinion of me.”

That wasn’t _entirely_ true. She thought he was good looking at the very least. She briefly wondered if she should tell him that, if it’d make him feel better. “I _did_ have an opinion of you,” she said with great difficulty, “I thought you look nice.” She could feel her cheeks glow. It was a wonder that the night sky didn’t blaze up.

Sirius chuckled. The mortification was worth it.

-.-.-.-

“You know when people say ‘it’s been an honor’?”

“Yeah?”

“What does that feel like? To be told that simply _knowing_ you is an _honor_?”

“Sirius?”

“Yeah?”

“It’s an honor to be here with you,” Larka said, her own heart fearful of how truthful it was.

“Stop babying me,” he scoffed.

-.-.-.-

When she returned to the dorm one night, Larka found his pack of Embassy at the bottom of her basket, half hidden from view and slightly greasy from the food. She took it out, with the mind of returning it to him the next time she saw him, but she forgot. Instead, it remained there on her nightstand, reminding her every night before she went to sleep of Sirius’s smoking habits, like a stolen bit of him to which she had no right.

Then one night, right as she closed her eyes, something in her chest gave a funny plop, like there was a plug in her chest that was yanked down suddenly in a quick, electrocuting movement, but instead of water draining away, water filled her entire chest, warm and swelling, threatening to overflow in its abundance.

That was when Larka knew that she was in trouble.

-.-.-.-

Lying in the dark, Sirius found himself being more of a blathering git than usual. Apparently, she didn’t mind though, judging by the way she fussed over his eating habits, and sometimes eyed his cigarettes, counting how many were left, keeping track but never speaking to him about it, giving him complete autonomy—yet that glance, not reproachful and not accusing, somehow made him feel guilty whenever he took out a fag. Imagine, the day when someone could curb his smoking!

It was easy to talk here, though, about stuff that he had never said to James or Remus and had not wanted to say to himself even. Probably something to do with the utter darkness. He could barely be sure that he was actually speaking, making sounds, so vast and complete the darkness was. It felt like he was talking to some vague presence, not fully corporeal, a disjointed consciousness able to respond but not interact. It was like a confessional. Or a prayer altar. Hmm, did that make him a religious convert?

But tonight, tonight was _magical_ , in the most ancient sense of the word. April briskness in the air ran thick and syrupy and the blackness of the night was like a kaleidoscope of darkness instead of being flat. He knew what it was—magic. Not magic like today, with wand tricks and swishing their wrists like ungainly puppets—Old Magic******, before they needed silly things like wands, when magic was still blended into every breath, was the basic element of everything, and spells were complex rituals that took days, weeks, some even years to cast, a beautifully intricate and precise art, beseeching the natural world for rain or sun or an easy birth, or to turn stone smooth and lift them into castles. He glanced at Hogwarts castle, which looked further away than he remembered; they certainly didn’t make architecture like this anymore. Couldn’t.

He wondered how he only noticed this slow oozing of the castle itself tonight. Or perhaps it only started tonight? Then he ought to be wondering what triggered it, what was so special about tonight.

He turned his head and was about to ask Larka if she’d noticed anything odd, but forgot his question. She was smiling, a bright-teethed smile that made ridges on the side of her mouth down to her chin, pushing her sweet apple cheeks up, so bouncy-looking that he wondered how they would feel. Her eyebrows gently sloped over her luminous brown eyes. Her gaze was so warm and happy and ready to envelope the entirety of him, a little like a cognac buzz.

“Oh,” he had just said.

He felt like he was seeing her for the first time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * Sirius A. Black had been able to do this trick since very early in his life. It first started when he couldn’t reach an extinguished candle and yet it burst back into flames; but it was always and only candles. He realized that it was something nobody else seemed to be able to do, but then soon realized that he couldn’t anymore do ‘it’ either. He was very depressed over it for a while, because it seemed like something precious he hadn’t even learned to appreciate had been taken away from him. One day in Hogwarts, he was out of a lighter and desperately needed a smoke, and voila, ‘it’ happened again. He then tried to secretly cultivate this talent, but alas, no progress in two years. In the depth of his heart, Sirius was waiting for ‘it’ to leave abruptly again.
> 
> ** ‘Hanging out’ was a phrase that Sirius A. Black picked up from Arlene Day, an American bird, and he loved the image of hanging somebody up so that they couldn’t escape as he delivered a monologue about the subtleties of verbena soap. He had jammed it into conversations during the most unsuitable situations ever since. It was one of Sirius’s most infuriating habits, picking up other people’s habits second-hand.
> 
> *** Of course Sirius A. Black did not speculate that Larka J. Roxburgh had an active hand in the plot to destroy Flynn Greengrass. It wasn’t her style; too convoluted and dependent on calculating other people’s precise reactions. If, Sirius figured, Larka was to pull off a prank, it would be something straightforward and classic, something that required no one else but got the point across lucidly. Like, dungbombs. No matter how many elaborate pranks Sirius created over the years, he would always have a special place in his heart for dungbombs.
> 
> **** Okay, so Mister Denton Ackerman the language tutor could not claim that Sirius A. Black always spoke in perfect heightened RP, no matter his state of inebriation, but it was close enough. Never once did Sirius betray a hint of a Brummie or—Merlin forbid—West Country accent. Sirius tended to, however, adopt an over-the-top Scouse accent whenever he wished to annoy pureblood company. He also sometimes blatantly disregarded grammar, but at least his Latin was always properly conjugated.
> 
> ***** Guildford was only a town (63,000 by estimated 1997 population consensus), but compared to Cheviot Hills, it seemed urban as urban went. Missus Prudencia Roxburgh never liked Cheviot Hills, being a tiny community in what was by far the most rustic part of Northumberland south of the borders. She liked luncheons and afternoon teas, haut monde gossip and ladylike cucumber sandwiches (although she did not like cucumbers)—but like mentioned before, true love got in the way, and Prudencia made her choice.
> 
> ****** Like every pureblood boy, Sirius A. Black had received the top-notch traditional education ever since he could say his first word (which had, incidentally, been ‘no’). It had been before he knew there existed the concept of ‘no’ (ironically), and had aimed to please Mother so she wouldn’t be quite as Motherly. Despite his mediocre grades in Hogwarts (beyond his natural affiliation for Potions, although he never managed to beat Snape, that snivelling little tosser, and of course Defence Against the Dart Arts, because, duh) now, he had be an ace student in his earlier lessons. He was decent at Greek, Latin, French, Italian, German, danced well (if a little too rigidly, what did the teacher know), memorized Philosophy, History, Literature with a single reading (although he never got what all the fuss was about), was of course a natural at Snobbery, and although chess was beyond him, he made up in the Dark Arts.
> 
> Strangely, he had enjoyed Dark Arts greatly as well—not the really Dark parts, the Unforgivables and whatnot, but the more historic part, going into the fluidity of the world in the Golden Age, the massive spells of the Silver Age, the decline in the Bronze Age, and the catastrophe in the Heroic Age. There wasn’t much on the Heroic Age, but boy did he love trying to figure out the Monster That Ate the World, as he had dubbed it. James never put stock in those stories (like most people, Sirius thought, appalled, and the stupid mass of people was always wrong), but Sirius loved reading about them.  
> So of course he recognized Old Magic when he saw it.


	10. As He Was

**Chapter** **9**

**As He Was**

Sirius was no foreigner to the sensation of a quickened heart, a dry throat, or a lightened body in danger of floating away at the thought of someone, so he knew what it meant. And if he was going to do this, then he might as well do it properly.

-.-.-.-.-

This was awful. It was the end of world. The feeling might have been exaggerated and probably unwarranted but that didn’t stop the dark pool of anxiety churn in her stomach as she looked at what was laid out before her, on the her table with scratches and pen marks from generations of idle scraping.

Her astronomy exam.

Acceptable*.

Larka needed to remind herself to regulate her breathing. Thankfully, it accounted for only ten percentages and Professor Sinistra had been so, so awfully nice and allowed her to turn in an extra chart to bump the mark up to an Exceeds Expectations. The professor expressed concern over her recent work, citing uncharacteristic carelessness in her drawing and calculations. Larka had been too ashamed to even look at him in the eyes, afraid of his disappointed gaze, before she quietly scampered away. What could she tell him? That the decline in quality and her failure of a test was due to late-night escapades with the resident ostracized playboy? She wasn’t living a Harlequin penny novel.

It had to stop. Life had to return to what it was four months ago.

With a pang, Sirius’s carefully constructed face flashed in her mind: hair so dark it looked black, falling over his full brows, a slant light playfully highlighting the slight curve of his nose, and shadows extending the exquisite corners of his vivid grey eyes. It wasn’t like she was smitten or anything, but even a neutral party must admire the blazing clarity of his eyes.

But no.

No, she told herself. May had started and all things seemed possible in May. It was time to put away impractical fancies.

-.-.-

“Are you alright?” Kelso asked her.

Larka didn’t go to the Quidditch pitch last night, and the guilt was almost eating her alive. The entire night, Larka had dreamt of Sirius, frozen stiff and white, an ice pop fitted among the bleachers at the top of the Quidditch pitch, his cheeks blue and lips purple, grey eyes like marbles boring straight into her dream-vision, in a silent accusation of _why, why, why_.

“Yes, I’m fine, sorry for worrying you,” Larka apologized.

“Novia’s not _still_ ,” Kelso whispered discretely, careful to camouflage her voice under the hubbub of the common room, directed away from Novia on the other side of the round table, “tearing up her sheets and whatnot, is she? I thought she’d gotten over him by now.”

Larka thought about Novia’s second bedside lamp and third set of sheets that Larka had sewn back together, and said, “She is; just residual anger, maybe.” Novia had seemed to have gotten over actively missing Sirius two weeks after their breakup, and haven’t noticed anything peculiar about Sirius’s disappearance from his coterie, but she still had so much destruction pent up.

Kelso sighed, flashed Novia a smile, before turning back to Larka, “At least she’s no longer running off weeping every other hour; what a nightmare that first week had been—oh _Merlin_ , speak of the devil!”

Who was it but Sirius, sauntering over, a slow, purposeful walk through the Gryffindor common room, in another band tee and the leather jacket that needed mending. There was no mistaking his direction, which was their corner table and settee.

Novia, hitherto studying her notes intently, started to tremble**.

Sirius stopped at the edge of their table, leaning forward and putting his elbows on the waxed birch surface, his hands coming up to cross his fingers in perfect parallel lines. "Larka," his voice carried through the entire common room, a low timbre that held just the right amount of purr, "if you're free this Saturday, would you like to accompany me to Hogsmeade? We'll go for to the pictures and a dinner, the traditional sort of date***."

Larka looked around—it seemed like she was the only person around named Larka. She looked up at Sirius, whose face was a slate of earnestness. He couldn’t be serious? She looked left helplessly at Kelso, who avoided her gaze as if in disapproval. She looked back at Sirius, silently imploring him to explain.

He just waited, a monument of patience (a peculiar sight indeed).

Larka opened her mouth, found her throat and lips completely dry, closed her mouth, licked her lips, and then tried once more, “I—I have to think about it,” she said feebly.

Sirius nodded, apparently not at all put off by this subtle rejection. “Of course,” he said, straightening up, “A lady must ponder. I shall humbly await,” he bowed and took her limp hand, kissing the top of her middle knuckle, “good news, I hope.”

He certainly did not do anything without a spectacle; Larka thought as he walked away, disappearing once more into whatever different dimension that housed Sirius during the daylight nowadays.

“ _What_ ,” Kelso breathed out, “was _that_?”

Larka could not answer her.

“So will you?” Novia asked. Larka, as familiar with Novia as she was, could not discern any particular emotion from Novia’s voice.

“I don’t know,” Larka said honestly, and she wouldn’t until Friday night.

Thursday at dinner, Kelso mildly inquired if Larka had made up her mind, her eyes catching the (now) rare sight of Sirius in the Great Hall, close by not too close to where they were sitting.

“I don’t know,” Larka repeated herself.

Kelso replied, “I think you have to, otherwise this ‘problem’ will just fester.”

Larka did not appreciate Kelso’s gesture of air quotes, but she did admit to the valid point—it was was definitely _festering_.

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Sirius stretching, arms outwards and balancing tall chair by its hind legs, a dangerous feat since the Great Hall chairs were heavy oak and generally refused to move, let alone dexterously. It was an exemplary feat of willpower that kept Larka from turning to him in worry. Of course, even without turning she could imagine what she would have saw—his black hair would be falling just slightly into his grey eyes, and the shirt underneath his open jacket would show just a sliver of pale muscle, his shoulders would roll back once, twice, and then his fingers would start to tap the table top just about—

_Tap, tap, tap._

—Now.

Larka did _not_ spend a large portion of her time watching or thinking about Sirius, just that he was such a memorable sort of person that it was easy to have a vivid image of him in her mind. She, of course, was not _still_ thinking about him; no, she was thinking about—those ornamental pumpkins sure looked, well, ornamental.

“Hmm,” Novia hummed beside her, as if knowing she was thinking about—about pumpkins, of course, why it was hardly the season for pumpkins, being May and warm and quite some time away from Halloween, and really, who decided that pumpkins were ornamental?

Thursday night was awkward.

Novia sat on her bed, her back against the wall and facing the long, wrought iron framed window directly, her body a taut north to south line while Larka looked at her helplessly from the east. The furniture in their room were set up to portion the rectangular space into fair portions, but never before had Larka felt so distinctively that there were sides to this room. Larka tried to make small talk—gossip, food at dinner, and finally resorting to the weather—but Novia gave her curt answers and clearly did not wish to converse.

Larka went to bed feeling small and abandoned.

Friday morning was even more awkward. Larka woke at precisely seven twenty five, as per usual, gingerly climbed out of bed and crossed the room to wake Novia up, as per usual. She found, however, Novia to be already awake, lying perfectly still in her bed, hands crossed resting on her stomach, staring straight at the ceiling like a stone golem that had yet figured out how to command its limbs.

“Novia?” Larka said tentatively.

Novia did not respond straightaway, but her eyes flickered to hold Larka in her reflective blue pupils. There seemed to be a million accusations and yet nothing at all in her stare that lasted the eternity of a minute, after which Novia rolled out of bed and said “I'm up” without looking at Larka again.

Novia seemed pensive the entire morning, not even bothering with doodling in the margins of her notebook during class. When they stopped by corridors that was the halfway point from the Gryffindor tower to the Slytherin dungeons, where they always met Kelso for lunch on Fridays, Novia suddenly said, “Are you going?”

There was no doubt as to what she was asking. “I don't know,” Larka answered yet again, but she knew she was just procrastinating making an actual decision.

“You should go; no, you _have_ to,” Novia corrected herself.

“Have to what?” Kelso asked, coming up beside them.

“Nothing,” Novia said briskly, “have to eat lunch, let's go in.”

However, it was as impossible to keep focused during lunch as it was in class. Larka’s thoughts always found its way to Sirius. Lunch served buttermilk fried chicken and Larka thought that he would have found it too battered and fried for too long. The scratch marks on the wooden surface of the dining table looked like a landscape of grass under the night sky to her. The noise of chicken bones being ripped apart sounded like Sirius absentmindedly cracking his knuckles****, cupping one large, pale hand over the other and rolling the inside hand until all his bones cracked, a sound that he found comforting and Larka found slightly disconcerting. Halfway through the afternoon Binn’s lecture on the evolution of firecrackers and gunpowder, Larka remembered how Sirius said the old croakers (that was what he called the Tudor cavalry) used a touch of magic to steady their hands when firing***** and she spent the rest of the class worrying about how eager he had sounded and if perhaps he would recklessly try to recreate that after his breakthrough with the lighter nonverbal spell.

In the middle of working out a housework charm, Larka had an epiphany—these two days had been even _more_ detrimental to her pursuit of good marks. Being a reasonable woman, Larka then made the sound deduction that there was nothing advantageous to _not_ going to a dinner and movie with Sirius. It wasn't as if falling hopelessly in irrevocable, desperate love depended on and solely on just one evening.

So that evening, as Larka shut their residence door behind her, she said delicately, “I think I’ll go with him.” She already had Novia’s blessings (‘blessings’? was that what it was? could Novia give it? did she need it?), but she had wanted to check with Novia again, before she said anything to Sirius. ( _Emma_ had taught her that communication was crucial.)

Novia didn’t seem surprised; she shrugged as she kept her back to Larka. “Good. He’s something that all girls have to suffer through once.”

What an odd choice of diction, ‘suffer through’, like Sirius was some kind of ordeal, a phase, the dark tunnel when people talk about ‘the light at the end of the tunnel’.

“It’s for the best,” Novia added, “If you break his heart then he deserves that, and if he breaks yours, well, he won’t, because you’re going in with the proper knowledge of what he is. You might as enjoy it while it lasts.”

“What he is?” Larka repeated foolishly.

Novia turned around to face Larka now, her face flushed with some emotion, “A narcissistic, insensitive, stupid, uncultured, chauvinistic, nasty, chain-smoking _arsehole_ who is incapable of empathy******.”

Larka smartly kept quiet and climbed into bed.

Later into that night, just when Larka had sunk into a sweet slumber with a very promising beginning to a dream (she was sitting on a gigantic striped mushroom, petting a floating mackerel in mid-air)—she was rudely interrupted in her imaginative efforts. 

“Ooh,” she groaned, unwilling to open her eyes.

Something feathered the side of her neck again, ticklish and annoying. Larka resigned to drift into consciousness as she mumbled, “What is it?” Or rather, she meant to say that, but a string of some sound came out instead. The tickling did not stop, and Larka opened her eyes with Herculean effort and peered into the darkness. A black form was hovering over her. Hmm, how alarming, Larka thought calmly as she reached to her right to tug at her bedside lamp. 

It was Sirius, although without a pet mackerel, which confused Larka greatly. She really was too groggy for this, whatever this was. “Sirius?”

“Yours truly,” he confirmed. 

“Yours truly,” he confirmed. He looked around, head cocked to the side like a curious sparrow. Larka blushed for the state of their room: it wasn't messy, but it was close to being so.

“What are you doing here?” she asked. Then after a moment, she asked the right question, “Wait, how did you get inside?” She was in her embarrassingly grandmotherly flannel pyjamas and drew up the equally grandmotherly paisley quilt up to her chin.

Sirius flashed his winning smile and replied airily, “One must have ways of getting about discreetly.”

Larka tried not to think of all the previous times that Sirius had sneaked into girls' residences, and exactly what that implied. Or all the grand adventures that he had before her. With all those other girls. And the experience, the pleasures, the stories—the tales that she was not part of. She felt slightly embarrassed at the rising feeling and felt that Sirius somehow could tell, like a child feeling like their parent was omniscient. “So why did you come here?” she distracted herself by asking. It was a prudent question, she applauded herself.

“Well I have to know whether to book a Hogsmeade restaurant for dinner or not.”

All restaurants in Hogsmeade were walk-ins, but Larka blushed and said, “Sure.” Then she realized how she had repeated the back-and-forth between Novia and him before; horrified, she looked up and blurted out, “Oh Merlin, I mean—”

Sirius tapped her lips with his fingertips and stopped her from rambling on, “I get exactly what you mean, which is, ‘Oh Sirius,” he threw his head back and brought his hand to his forehead with great dramatic flair, “please carry me away from the dreadful gloom of this tower and fly me to the moon!’”

Larka swallowed a chuckle and instead said dryly, “Let’s say I mean that.”

“Alright,” Sirius winked, “Dinner for two, I shall inform my footman to immediately inform the butler to inform the booking-valet.”

“Good luck finding any of those three people,” Larka bid him.

“Nonsense,” he waved, “can’t you see George, Michael, and John right behind me?” There was, of course, no George, Michael, or John. “Oh, and,” Sirius turned to the other side of the room, “we’re good though, right?” he asked Novia, who had been still this entire time. Larka was about to shush Sirius before he could wake the sleeping Novia when Novia suddenly sat up in bed, not a trace of sleep-induced daze in her eyes.

“Good?” Novia asked sharply.

“Yes,” Sirius said, facing great danger with bravery and even stepping towards her—oh, the courage of the ignorant, Larka apprehensively. “I know you have some, uh, thoughts about me, due to misunderstandings, and of course,” before Novia could fly into a rage, “my mistakes, but I trust that being gracious as you are, you can look past that. After all,” he flashed his pearly teeth, “as I’ve lately come to understand, friendship needs to be looked after.”

Novia, instead of wrath, responded with a pensive and—wistful? Larka didn’t understand—look. “You,” she said simply.

“Yes,” Sirius replied.

“ _This_?”

“Yes,” he answered again, “What I should be, at least."

“Fine,” Novia dropped down to the bed, dragging the sewn-together cover over her again, and adamantly faced the wall.

“Well that’s something sort of taken care of,” Sirius returned to Larka with a lopsided grin.

The strange dynamic between her and Novia was not to be rebalanced so easily, but Larka thought the effort should be commended, so she grinned back before shooing him away.

“Eight,” he shouted as the door closed, disregarding what the neighbours would have thought, “I’ll come pick you up at eight!”

-.-.-.-.-

Sirius had been stewing in anticipation and the foreign sensation of nervousness until Friday. He last remembered this congealing feeling when he returned to the House after being Sorted. There was little reason to be nervous, he reasoned: he figured that Larka rather fancied him, and even if she didn’t, the usual Sirius would have had complete confidence in his swashbuckling charms. Except he wasn’t the usual Sirius now, was he? He wasn’t sure who he was without the familiar shapes of his Marauders next to him, but he felt like she knew who he was, and to understand him was surely to love him.

She had, inexplicably, said something true about him, and because of that, he also felt like he had touched something true of hers, in the same intimate way. He wasn't quite sure what this feeling was, but in this time of confused logic, he thought maybe he wanted her love. Scratch that, he did want that, but he was also afraid to want it, and even more afraid to try to get it. Fear was not, however, a foreign sensation, unlike nervousness, and he knew how to deal with it.

Friday afternoon was when this pudgy, rural cheeked little thing found him sitting in a tree at the base of the Gryffindor tower, staring daringly into the fading sun (with a pair of sunglasses; he was daring, not stupid). Sirius looked down at her, futilely regulating her own breath, and had snapped a branch and was about to drop it on her head when he recognized her as one of Larka's. He swung forward and jumped, landing (gracefully, if he might add, even if his silk trousers now had a tear, but he turned strategically so it wasn’t visible) in front of the girl and drew up to his full height so as to tower over her imposingly (he had to be nice to her but not that nice). “I hope you're not playing Pheidippides,” he drawled lazily in his snob voice, "to do the whole ‘she told me to tell you’ thing; that's so nursery school.”

The pudgy girl shook her head then said shakily, “Stay away from my friends.”

She really didn't understand the inner works of a man’s mind very well, did she? A lesser man would have been spurred to date Larka just to spite this little _boule de suif_.

It was fortunate for her that Sirius was not such a base man, he congratulated himself as he picked the lock to Larka's room.

As he took the door handle to turn it, he paused. The two days of uncertainty crested right then, overwhelming him like a rancorous sea wave dragging him undertow.

He swallowed cautiously.

In that second, Sirius became like any other boy and pondered: why should Larka fancy him? Moony was the sort of person who was good, invariably and fundamentally. Prongs was good, fundamentally, but not invariably. He—Sirius Altair Black, Life-Force of Redcrosse, Bon Vivant Extraordinaire, Most Original Personage To Have Existed In Possibly Forever—was good occasionally and usually as an afterthought. Larka was good like Moony, always patient, always kind, and never struggled to be so. She was like a completely different species from him. Or mutated. Probably mutated. Like a dragon with scaled wings and elk legs. Actually that beast probably existed in more ancient times******* (the olden days had really fucked up creatures). Anyhow, the point was, Larka shared with Moony this quintessential goodness. Sure, she lacked Moony’s underlying watchful cunning, but that proved to be a grain of sugar in a salt mine. And Moony was much more suited for domestic life than Sirius would ever be, could ever been. Sirius didn’t know why birds didn’t besiege Florian constantly instead of himself—well, okay, Alistair knew why, but he didn’t understand it, and Larka wasn’t like that, really.

Even Prongs, with his relentless hard-headedness was more of a traditional love interest than the flighty Sirius with a bad record and even worse reputation. Prongs was also money; new as money came, but still money like one couldn’t even believe, matched by not even the richest of the peerage families, and he of all people knew that the peerage families weren’t as minted as they pretended to be, least of all his own. Prongs was such a straightforward, friendly person that he was at once easy to love and the thought of being loved by such a person was undoubtedly magnificent.

It had always been so very obvious, that he was not a smart pick. In a rare moment of doubt, Sirius wondered why Larka, oh sensible, sensitive Larka, would choose him. Not that it was really a choice, or that Prongs or Moony would reciprocate, but Sirius had enough experience in this sort of matter to understand that reciprocity wasn’t a perquisite of anything. Even if Larka dismissed those two, who was to say she should take up him, Sirius? Who was to say Sirius wouldn’t fuck up like he always did, be a tosser even when he didn’t mean to be one? Because what good had he brought to anybody, to any single person, even when he tried his damnest?

But he was getting ahead of himself.

Sirius steadied his breath and thoughts, braced himself for the best and worst, put a smile on his face, and turned the handle.

* * *

End notes:

Sirius was no foreigner to the sensation of a quickened heart, a dry throat, or a lightened body in danger of floating away at the thought of someone, so he knew what it meant. And if he was going to do this, then he might as well do it properly.

-.-.-.-.-

This was awful. It was the end of world. The feeling might have been exaggerated and probably unwarranted but that didn’t stop the dark pool of anxiety churn in her stomach as she looked at what was laid out before her, on the her table with scratches and pen marks from generations of idle scraping.

Her astronomy exam.

Acceptable*.

Larka needed to remind herself to regulate her breathing. Thankfully, it accounted for only ten percentages and Professor Sinistra had been so, so awfully nice and allowed her to turn in an extra chart to bump the mark up to an Exceeds Expectations. The professor expressed concern over her recent work, citing uncharacteristic carelessness in her drawing and calculations. Larka had been too ashamed to even look at him in the eyes, afraid of his disappointed gaze, before she quietly scampered away. What could she tell him? That the decline in quality and her failure of a test was due to late-night escapades with the resident ostracized playboy? She wasn’t living a Harlequin penny novel.

It had to stop. Life had to return to what it was four months ago.

With a pang, Sirius’s carefully constructed face flashed in her mind: hair so dark it looked black, falling over his full brows, a slant light playfully highlighting the slight curve of his nose, and shadows extending the exquisite corners of his vivid grey eyes. It wasn’t like she was smitten or anything, but even a neutral party must admire the blazing clarity of his eyes.

But no.

No, she told herself. May had started and all things seemed possible in May. It was time to put away impractical fancies.

-.-.-

“Are you alright?” Kelso asked her.

Larka didn’t go to the Quidditch pitch last night, and the guilt was almost eating her alive. The entire night, Larka had dreamt of Sirius, frozen stiff and white, an ice pop fitted among the bleachers at the top of the Quidditch pitch, his cheeks blue and lips purple, grey eyes like marbles boring straight into her dream-vision, in a silent accusation of _why, why, why_.

“Yes, I’m fine, sorry for worrying you,” Larka apologized.

“Novia’s not _still_ ,” Kelso whispered discretely, careful to camouflage her voice under the hubbub of the common room, directed away from Novia on the other side of the round table, “tearing up her sheets and whatnot, is she? I thought she’d gotten over him by now.”

Larka thought about Novia’s second bedside lamp and third set of sheets that Larka had sewn back together, and said, “She is; just residual anger, maybe.” Novia had seemed to have gotten over actively missing Sirius two weeks after their breakup, and haven’t noticed anything peculiar about Sirius’s disappearance from his coterie, but she still had so much destruction pent up.

Kelso sighed, flashed Novia a smile, before turning back to Larka, “At least she’s no longer running off weeping every other hour; what a nightmare that first week had been—oh _Merlin_ , speak of the devil!”

Who was it but Sirius, sauntering over, a slow, purposeful walk through the Gryffindor common room, in another band tee and the leather jacket that needed mending. There was no mistaking his direction, which was their corner table and settee.

Novia, hitherto studying her notes intently, started to tremble**.

Sirius stopped at the edge of their table, leaning forward and putting his elbows on the waxed birch surface, his hands coming up to cross his fingers in perfect parallel lines. "Larka," his voice carried through the entire common room, a low timbre that held just the right amount of purr, "if you're free this Saturday, would you like to accompany me to Hogsmeade? We'll go for to the pictures and a dinner, the traditional sort of date***."

Larka looked around—it seemed like she was the only person around named Larka. She looked up at Sirius, whose face was a slate of earnestness. He couldn’t be serious? She looked left helplessly at Kelso, who avoided her gaze as if in disapproval. She looked back at Sirius, silently imploring him to explain.

He just waited, a monument of patience (a peculiar sight indeed).

Larka opened her mouth, found her throat and lips completely dry, closed her mouth, licked her lips, and then tried once more, “I—I have to think about it,” she said feebly.

Sirius nodded, apparently not at all put off by this subtle rejection. “Of course,” he said, straightening up, “A lady must ponder. I shall humbly await,” he bowed and took her limp hand, kissing the top of her middle knuckle, “good news, I hope.”

He certainly did not do anything without a spectacle; Larka thought as he walked away, disappearing once more into whatever different dimension that housed Sirius during the daylight nowadays.

“ _What_ ,” Kelso breathed out, “was _that_?”

Larka could not answer her.

“So will you?” Novia asked. Larka, as familiar with Novia as she was, could not discern any particular emotion from Novia’s voice.

“I don’t know,” Larka said honestly, and she wouldn’t until Friday night.

Thursday at dinner, Kelso mildly inquired if Larka had made up her mind, her eyes catching the (now) rare sight of Sirius in the Great Hall, close by not too close to where they were sitting.

“I don’t know,” Larka repeated herself.

Kelso replied, “I think you have to, otherwise this ‘problem’ will just fester.”

Larka did not appreciate Kelso’s gesture of air quotes, but she did admit to the valid point—it was was definitely _festering_.

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Sirius stretching, arms outwards and balancing tall chair by its hind legs, a dangerous feat since the Great Hall chairs were heavy oak and generally refused to move, let alone dexterously. It was an exemplary feat of willpower that kept Larka from turning to him in worry. Of course, even without turning she could imagine what she would have saw—his black hair would be falling just slightly into his grey eyes, and the shirt underneath his open jacket would show just a sliver of pale muscle, his shoulders would roll back once, twice, and then his fingers would start to tap the table top just about—

_Tap, tap, tap._

—Now.

Larka did _not_ spend a large portion of her time watching or thinking about Sirius, just that he was such a memorable sort of person that it was easy to have a vivid image of him in her mind. She, of course, was not _still_ thinking about him; no, she was thinking about—those ornamental pumpkins sure looked, well, ornamental.

“Hmm,” Novia hummed beside her, as if knowing she was thinking about—about pumpkins, of course, why it was hardly the season for pumpkins, being May and warm and quite some time away from Halloween, and really, who decided that pumpkins were ornamental?

Thursday night was awkward.

Novia sat on her bed, her back against the wall and facing the long, wrought iron framed window directly, her body a taut north to south line while Larka looked at her helplessly from the east. The furniture in their room were set up to portion the rectangular space into fair portions, but never before had Larka felt so distinctively that there were sides to this room. Larka tried to make small talk—gossip, food at dinner, and finally resorting to the weather—but Novia gave her curt answers and clearly did not wish to converse.

Larka went to bed feeling small and abandoned.

Friday morning was even more awkward. Larka woke at precisely seven twenty five, as per usual, gingerly climbed out of bed and crossed the room to wake Novia up, as per usual. She found, however, Novia to be already awake, lying perfectly still in her bed, hands crossed resting on her stomach, staring straight at the ceiling like a stone golem that had yet figured out how to command its limbs.

“Novia?” Larka said tentatively.

Novia did not respond straightaway, but her eyes flickered to hold Larka in her reflective blue pupils. There seemed to be a million accusations and yet nothing at all in her stare that lasted the eternity of a minute, after which Novia rolled out of bed and said “I'm up” without looking at Larka again.

Novia seemed pensive the entire morning, not even bothering with doodling in the margins of her notebook during class. When they stopped by corridors that was the halfway point from the Gryffindor tower to the Slytherin dungeons, where they always met Kelso for lunch on Fridays, Novia suddenly said, “Are you going?”

There was no doubt as to what she was asking. “I don't know,” Larka answered yet again, but she knew she was just procrastinating making an actual decision.

“You should go; no, you _have_ to,” Novia corrected herself.

“Have to what?” Kelso asked, coming up beside them.

“Nothing,” Novia said briskly, “have to eat lunch, let's go in.”

However, it was as impossible to keep focused during lunch as it was in class. Larka’s thoughts always found its way to Sirius. Lunch served buttermilk fried chicken and Larka thought that he would have found it too battered and fried for too long. The scratch marks on the wooden surface of the dining table looked like a landscape of grass under the night sky to her. The noise of chicken bones being ripped apart sounded like Sirius absentmindedly cracking his knuckles****, cupping one large, pale hand over the other and rolling the inside hand until all his bones cracked, a sound that he found comforting and Larka found slightly disconcerting. Halfway through the afternoon Binn’s lecture on the evolution of firecrackers and gunpowder, Larka remembered how Sirius said the old croakers (that was what he called the Tudor cavalry) used a touch of magic to steady their hands when firing***** and she spent the rest of the class worrying about how eager he had sounded and if perhaps he would recklessly try to recreate that after his breakthrough with the lighter nonverbal spell.

In the middle of working out a housework charm, Larka had an epiphany—these two days had been even _more_ detrimental to her pursuit of good marks. Being a reasonable woman, Larka then made the sound deduction that there was nothing advantageous to _not_ going to a dinner and movie with Sirius. It wasn't as if falling hopelessly in irrevocable, desperate love depended on and solely on just one evening.

So that evening, as Larka shut their residence door behind her, she said delicately, “I think I’ll go with him.” She already had Novia’s blessings (‘blessings’? was that what it was? could Novia give it? did she need it?), but she had wanted to check with Novia again, before she said anything to Sirius. ( _Emma_ had taught her that communication was crucial.)

Novia didn’t seem surprised; she shrugged as she kept her back to Larka. “Good. He’s something that all girls have to suffer through once.”

What an odd choice of diction, ‘suffer through’, like Sirius was some kind of ordeal, a phase, the dark tunnel when people talk about ‘the light at the end of the tunnel’.

“It’s for the best,” Novia added, “If you break his heart then he deserves that, and if he breaks yours, well, he won’t, because you’re going in with the proper knowledge of what he is. You might as enjoy it while it lasts.”

“What he is?” Larka repeated foolishly.

Novia turned around to face Larka now, her face flushed with some emotion, “A narcissistic, insensitive, stupid, uncultured, chauvinistic, nasty, chain-smoking _arsehole_ who is incapable of empathy******.”

Larka smartly kept quiet and climbed into bed.

Later into that night, just when Larka had sunk into a sweet slumber with a very promising beginning to a dream (she was sitting on a gigantic striped mushroom, petting a floating mackerel in mid-air)—she was rudely interrupted in her imaginative efforts. 

“Ooh,” she groaned, unwilling to open her eyes.

Something feathered the side of her neck again, ticklish and annoying. Larka resigned to drift into consciousness as she mumbled, “What is it?” Or rather, she meant to say that, but a string of some sound came out instead. The tickling did not stop, and Larka opened her eyes with Herculean effort and peered into the darkness. A black form was hovering over her. Hmm, how alarming, Larka thought calmly as she reached to her right to tug at her bedside lamp. 

It was Sirius, although without a pet mackerel, which confused Larka greatly. She really was too groggy for this, whatever this was. “Sirius?”

“Yours truly,” he confirmed. 

“Yours truly,” he confirmed. He looked around, head cocked to the side like a curious sparrow. Larka blushed for the state of their room: it wasn't messy, but it was close to being so.

“What are you doing here?” she asked. Then after a moment, she asked the right question, “Wait, how did you get inside?” She was in her embarrassingly grandmotherly flannel pyjamas and drew up the equally grandmotherly paisley quilt up to her chin.

Sirius flashed his winning smile and replied airily, “One must have ways of getting about discreetly.”

Larka tried not to think of all the previous times that Sirius had sneaked into girls' residences, and exactly what that implied. Or all the grand adventures that he had before her. With all those other girls. And the experience, the pleasures, the stories—the tales that she was not part of. She felt slightly embarrassed at the rising feeling and felt that Sirius somehow could tell, like a child feeling like their parent was omniscient. “So why did you come here?” she distracted herself by asking. It was a prudent question, she applauded herself.

“Well I have to know whether to book a Hogsmeade restaurant for dinner or not.”

All restaurants in Hogsmeade were walk-ins, but Larka blushed and said, “Sure.” Then she realized how she had repeated the back-and-forth between Novia and him before; horrified, she looked up and blurted out, “Oh Merlin, I mean—”

Sirius tapped her lips with his fingertips and stopped her from rambling on, “I get exactly what you mean, which is, ‘Oh Sirius,” he threw his head back and brought his hand to his forehead with great dramatic flair, “please carry me away from the dreadful gloom of this tower and fly me to the moon!’”

Larka swallowed a chuckle and instead said dryly, “Let’s say I mean that.”

“Alright,” Sirius winked, “Dinner for two, I shall inform my footman to immediately inform the butler to inform the booking-valet.”

“Good luck finding any of those three people,” Larka bid him.

“Nonsense,” he waved, “can’t you see George, Michael, and John right behind me?” There was, of course, no George, Michael, or John. “Oh, and,” Sirius turned to the other side of the room, “we’re good though, right?” he asked Novia, who had been still this entire time. Larka was about to shush Sirius before he could wake the sleeping Novia when Novia suddenly sat up in bed, not a trace of sleep-induced daze in her eyes.

“Good?” Novia asked sharply.

“Yes,” Sirius said, facing great danger with bravery and even stepping towards her—oh, the courage of the ignorant, Larka apprehensively. “I know you have some, uh, thoughts about me, due to misunderstandings, and of course,” before Novia could fly into a rage, “my mistakes, but I trust that being gracious as you are, you can look past that. After all,” he flashed his pearly teeth, “as I’ve lately come to understand, friendship needs to be looked after.”

Novia, instead of wrath, responded with a pensive and—wistful? Larka didn’t understand—look. “You,” she said simply.

“Yes,” Sirius replied.

“ _This_?”

“Yes,” he answered again, “What I should be, at least."

“Fine,” Novia dropped down to the bed, dragging the sewn-together cover over her again, and adamantly faced the wall.

“Well that’s something sort of taken care of,” Sirius returned to Larka with a lopsided grin.

The strange dynamic between her and Novia was not to be rebalanced so easily, but Larka thought the effort should be commended, so she grinned back before shooing him away.

“Eight,” he shouted as the door closed, disregarding what the neighbours would have thought, “I’ll come pick you up at eight!”

-.-.-.-.-

Sirius had been stewing in anticipation and the foreign sensation of nervousness until Friday. He last remembered this congealing feeling when he returned to the House after being Sorted*******. There was little reason to be nervous, he reasoned: he figured that Larka rather fancied him, and even if she didn’t, the usual Sirius would have had complete confidence in his swashbuckling charms. Except he wasn’t the usual Sirius now, was he? He wasn’t sure who he was without the familiar shapes of his Marauders next to him, but he felt like she knew who he was, and to understand him was surely to love him.

She had, inexplicably, said something true about him, and because of that, he also felt like he had touched something true of hers, in the same intimate way. He wasn't quite sure what this feeling was, but in this time of confused logic, he thought maybe he wanted her love. Scratch that, he did want that, but he was also afraid to want it, and even more afraid to try to get it. Fear was not, however, a foreign sensation, unlike nervousness, and he knew how to deal with it.

Friday afternoon was when this pudgy, rural cheeked little thing found him sitting in a tree at the base of the Gryffindor tower, staring daringly into the fading sun (with a pair of sunglasses; he was daring, not stupid). Sirius looked down at her, futilely regulating her own breath, and had snapped a branch and was about to drop it on her head when he recognized her as one of Larka's. He swung forward and jumped, landing (gracefully, if he might add, even if his silk trousers now had a tear, but he turned strategically so it wasn’t visible) in front of the girl and drew up to his full height so as to tower over her imposingly (he had to be nice to her but not that nice). “I hope you're not playing Pheidippides,” he drawled lazily in his snob voice, "to do the whole ‘she told me to tell you’ thing; that's so nursery school.”

The pudgy girl shook her head then said shakily, “Stay away from my friends.”

She really didn't understand the inner works of a man’s mind very well, did she? A lesser man would have been spurred to date Larka just to spite this little _boule de suif_.

It was fortunate for her that Sirius was not such a base man, he congratulated himself as he picked the lock to Larka's room.

As he took the door handle to turn it, he paused. The two days of uncertainty crested right then, overwhelming him like a rancorous sea wave dragging him undertow.

He swallowed cautiously.

In that second, Sirius became like any other boy and pondered: why should Larka fancy him? Moony was the sort of person who was good, invariably and fundamentally. Prongs was good, fundamentally, but not invariably. He—Sirius Altair Black, Life-Force of Redcrosse, Bon Vivant Extraordinaire, Most Original Personage To Have Existed In Possibly Forever—was good occasionally and usually as an afterthought. Larka was good like Moony, always patient, always kind, and never struggled to be so. She was like a completely different species from him. Or mutated. Probably mutated. Like a dragon with scaled wings and elk legs. Actually that beast probably existed in more ancient times******* (the olden days had really fucked up creatures). Anyhow, the point was, Larka shared with Moony this quintessential goodness. Sure, she lacked Moony’s underlying watchful cunning, but that proved to be a grain of sugar in a salt mine. And Moony was much more suited for domestic life than Sirius would ever be, could ever been. Sirius didn’t know why birds didn’t besiege Moony constantly instead of himself—well, okay, Sirius knew why, but he didn’t understand it, and Larka wasn’t like that, really.

Even Prongs, with his relentless hard-headedness was more of a traditional love interest than the flighty Sirius with a bad record and even worse reputation. Prongs was also money; new as money came, but still money like one couldn’t even believe, matched by not even the richest of the peerage families, and he of all people knew that the peerage families weren’t as minted as they pretended to be, least of all his own. Prongs was such a straightforward, friendly person that he was at once easy to love and the thought of being loved by such a person was undoubtedly magnificent.

It had always been so very obvious, that he was not a smart pick. In a rare moment of doubt, Sirius wondered why Larka, oh sensible, sensitive Larka, would choose him. Not that it was really a choice, or that Prongs or Moony would reciprocate, but Sirius had enough experience in this sort of matter to understand that reciprocity wasn’t a perquisite of anything. Even if Larka dismissed those two, who was to say she should take up him, Sirius? Who was to say Sirius wouldn’t fuck up like he always did, be a tosser even when he didn’t mean to be one? Because what good had he brought to anybody, to any single person, even when he tried his damnest?

But he was getting ahead of himself.

Sirius steadied his breath and thoughts, braced himself for the best and worst, put a smile on his face, and turned the handle.

* * *

End Notes:

* An Acceptable was indeed unacceptable, since Larka J. Roxburgh wanted to keep her options open for after graduation. In order to pursue further education in either mathematics or astronomy (or pioneer the academia area of astronomical mathematics, but that sounded so ambitious that it was silly and Larka couldn’t bring herself to tell anybody), she needed at least an Exceeds Expectations in all of her related courses.

** Novia Brooks, in the wake of Sirius A. Black approaching, was trying to decide if her predominant feeling was ‘I knew it! I knew he would come back to me’ or ‘I shall tell him no, I shan’t take him back, with suitable dignity and pride’. A mini war waged within her, and one side had almost won before Sirius rendered her internal civil war superfluous—what, which side won? Well, did it matter?

*** The ‘traditional sort’ was not the pureblood tradition. In fact, in the pureblood world, the modern invention of the ‘date’ was grudgingly tolerated with the sort of resigned acknowledgment that the kids would do what the kids wanted. The formal wooing process begun with an introduction (by a third mutual acquaintance) and then a courting period (chaperoned, of course). The ‘date’ could sort of, kind of, maybe be thought of as part of the latter stage. In any case, times were different, and most families just cared about the marriage proposal now anyway.

**** Sirius A. Black had a few habits that he recognized as ‘bad’—to societal standards and health care insurance rules, at least. Besides his smoking, which was actually becoming quite manageable now, at just a pack every three days, although he never meant to manage it—besides his smoking, he also had a habit of cracking his bones. The family physician told him that it was unhealthy for the connective tissue at the joints, but his Mother thought it was rude so he did it as much as he could—oh the small (only) battles that he won. By the time adulthood was in sight, sound of crackling bones was to Sirius what clattering baby rattles was to others.

***** The lock-n-thrust was a perversion of the immobilization spell and was universally used by the Normans when steadying their sword arm. By the Tudor period, the common soldiers had trouble inciting this simple spell, and a common measure to help spell-invoking was to produce a short and loud yell right before cocking their paper cartridge firearm—the concept was that the sudden, alarming sound would cause one to freeze naturally, and therefore help with the intended effect of the spell. This had been largely debunked by modern studies of magical theory.

****** As Arlene Day would say, this assessment was ‘way harsh’. As Judith Mariota the keeper of rumours would say, it was currently the popular opinion, and truth was what the masses made it to be anyway. As Lily Evans would say, it was ‘only partially true; the part about being a narcissistic, chauvinistic, chain-smoking arsehole especially true, but not so much the others’. As Scarlett Brühl would say, it was mostly accurate ‘except for perhaps the uncultured part’. As Larka J. Roxburgh would say, however, all the allegations were a tiny bit true, but that was the case for every single human being, only to differing degrees; what mattered was that she saw Sirius A. Black as a caring, sensitive, considerate, clever, cultured, gentlemanly arsehole who was perhaps a little too fond of smoking, but which uni boy did not have his vice?

******* The Sorting Hat had sat on Sirius A. Black’s head for a full seven minutes and twelve seconds, long enough for a junior parliamentary debate. When the boy requested to be in Gryffindor instead of Slytherin, the Hat, despite being wise and old, had a moment of being old beyond wisdom when he said, “But you’re a Black.”

Sirius, eleven years old, blew up like a puffer fish at the slightest provoke, went into a tirade of how the prejudices based on one’s last name has now been hardened into a system and made into an ideology, and he would one day gather enough masses to revolt against this ideology of repression and thoughtlessness. For how could one’s surname, one word, convey an identity that an eleven-year-old had yet to be able to erect for himself, and a judgment that would form that identity for him? By following this ideology, which is inherently racist, sexist, xenophobic, unfair, and ultimately evil, Hogwarts would inevitably fall as racist, sexist, xenophobic, unfair, and ultimately evil as well. He had not expected for a well-respected magical artefact, wealthy in age and therefore theoretically wealthy in wisdom, to be so predictably clichéd. And evil.

Needless to say, the Hat was bewildered at what an offhand remark had brought forth. In fact, he had not made any judgments (if so, he would have already dismissed the boy), but the boy was so ready to be affronted and so easily defensive that the Hat, who was indeed wealthy in wisdom, could see the scars on his mind. So he asked the boy whether he would be willing to bear scars on his back instead.

The boy considered Mother (who awoke with a Bloody Mary but made him punish himself less frequently now), Father (who still treated him like a pest and refused to think about where his string of disappearing women disappeared to), his little brother (who still looked at him with tender if hesitant brotherly eyes and sucked on his thumb when they were alone), his cousins (who were all beautiful outwards and rotting inwards), his Room (the one in the back of the cellar in the House, cold and dank with a smuggled small candle). He thought of his precious collection of clocks (a few of which should technically be national property, but what did the everyman know of incense clocks or the genius of Abraham-Louis Breguet’s carriage clocks; of which he would undoubtedly lose if his parents were further displease with him), his prized toy collection (his re-enactment figurines troop of the Alexander’s conquest of the Persian Empire, his fleets sailed like the Flying Dutchman, his palace model that had constant politics going on and a new emperor in power every other week —all soon to be his cousin’s, he knew, because he was no longer at an appropriate age for playthings), the little girl that his parents wanted to set him up with (a wimpy cry baby who fainted at the sight of a tarantula he had put on her lace gloves), the hundreds of people awaiting for him to fulfil his inheritance (awaiting and would always wait because he would never take up his Mother’s mantle, a thrill going through him at that thought), and finally the little boy on the train (whose father his own father didn’t like, so he immediately liked this James).

The boy Sirius considered his own flesh and skin, every bit a product of his parents, flawless because Mother was too elegant for scars, and said to the Hat: bring on the scars. And if there were traces of moisture at the corners of his eyes, he didn’t know whether it was for his clocks or his toys or Reggie or himself, but he didn’t care.

******** It most certainly did not.

 


	11. The Purple Rose

**Chapter 9**

**The Purple Rose**

The predictable thing would have been to fret and pass the entire Saturday in a daze, but Larka found herself in a sort of trance, running through mathematical proofs with a focused clarity like she was in an exam. Whenever her perfidious mind tried to think of Sirius, she coaxed it back with a thorny vector or byzantine star path. She drank in more knowledge from the hours of ten to six than she had the entire prior week, like a stranded person in the desert who had just figured out how to extract water out of cacti. This cemented her belief that it was the right decision to go on a date (a date! she could hardly think of the word in her mind, so embarrassingly unused as she was to the term) with Sirius.

Which was how seven o’clock in the evening found Larka standing in the lavatory, the over exuberant showerhead attacking her with water, and suddenly seized with a wave of anxiety.

There had to be a mistake. A classic miscommunication, perhaps, a common setup in Shakespeare, in which she (and Novia and Kelso apparently) misunderstood his words (perhaps the purebloods had an entirely different definition for ‘date’)? Or the widely used plot device in which the protagonist used a deuteragonist to spur the female love interest into action? Or even more maliciously, the western playboy that saw the virginal female and wished to conquest, a modern Alec d'Urbervilles? But if she had trouble envisioning Sirius taking her to a date, she had the same trouble envisioning herself posing as some sort of challenge to Sirius.

She wiped the fogged up, dimly lit mirror inside the lavatory, a blurred view of her naked front appearing after her hand (she was mildly embarrassed by her nude body and further embarrassed by her embarrassment). But, she told herself, she was not Tess, was not Bathsheba, not Marianne, not Helen, neither Havisham nor Maslova—she was Larka.

Larka steadfastly walked out of the hazy room and promptly faltered when she reached her wardrobe. What was apposite for a date? Novia generally wore simple, draping tees with jeans and called it a day with a colourful silk scarf around her neck, but Larka was neither Novia nor French. She had seen others’ attire range from sequined miniskirts to flowing silk dresses, oversized shirts to embellished jumpers. In fact, date dressing seemed to reflect more on personality than some unspoken convention for which Larka failed to get a memo. Maybe she could wear that wrap dress that mum got her; she felt like it was so overdressed for classes, so maybe this was the right sort of occasion? She picked out the hanger and slipped off the purple dress but a loud sigh from the other side of the room stopped her.

“Ugh,” Novia said emphatically, “You’re hopeless.” She staggered out of bed, where she had been curled up with a magazine, sending fugitive looks at Larka the entire time, “You’re not going as the mother of the bride; move over.”

Larka put the dress aside obediently, although she thought that it looked very different from what Mum usually wore.

Novia sifted through Larka’s wardrobe with an efficiency that came from knowing exactly what the wardrobe consisted of. She dragged out one dark red high-waisted wool skirt that Larka didn’t remember buying. Then she flung open her adjacent wardrobe and swiftly brought out a thin nautical striped jumper. “Here,” Novia said, “I wear this loose so it’ll fit you, and the wide collar will show your collarbones* if,” she said, “you still _have_ them after the recent ungodly binges you’ve been on every Wednesday. I can’t believe you eat so much.”

Larka bowed her head and slipped into the skirt, the thick wool flaring out at her hips and stopping a few inches above her knees, which she had to say, was flattering. She then took the striped jumper from Novia’s outstretched hands.

“Remember,” Novia said, “Be easy-going, laugh at all his jokes; don’t stare into his eyes when he’s talking, let him go on for a while before turning your full attention back to him—actually, you aren’t able to time it properly, so just be more nonchalant; don’t fret like you always do, and for the love of Merlin don’t speak your mind like you always do as well; wait for him to choose a film then exclaim that was exactly what you wanted to see; order junk food at dinner, burgers or pizza or fish and chips, that sort of shite, and drink beer if he’s taking it—”

Larka found it disconcerting that Novia treated this like the Great Seduction of Sirius 2.0, and wanted her to be a continuation of the persona Novia put on before—as if Novia couldn’t quite believe that this careful, thought-out construction could fail.

“—not going to do your makeup and hair since that would look like you’re _trying_ , and we want to try without appearing like it, but,” Novia padded Larka’s cheeks, “he won’t notice good foundation; Larka your _dark circles_.”

“Novia,” Larka said, letting her face be assaulted in order to have smoother skin, “It’s almost eight.”

“So plenty of time.”

“I plan on being on time. It _is_ right downstairs.”

Novia stopped fussing with the side of her nose.

“Novia,” Larka pleaded softly for Novia to let go.

“Fine,” Novia relented, shoving back her cosmetics with more force than was necessary. “ _Don’t_ take it from me, who knows these things.” She left the room, presumably to find Kelso in Slytherin.

After waiting for five minutes, Larka made her way slowly down the long dormitory stairs. She would not, she promised herself as she gripped the balusters too tightly, fall into the tragedy that so many women have pointed out to her.

She checked the time—it was precisely five to eight—and stepped out to the common room, her feet steady but her insides quivering, at the turning point of a crossroad or on the precipice of a cliff (or any other clichéd, dramatic metaphors).

Sirius was already waiting there, smashing as always in a dress robe over a charcoal herringbone track strip suit pants, a more sporty style for Sirius. Ever the contrarian, he forwent a boutonnière. He caught her eyeing his chest and said, “I didn’t know what colours you’d be wearing.”

Larka nodded—she herself wasn’t dressed to the nines—and said honestly, “You look very nice.”

“Nice!” Sirius cried in mock outrage, “This,” he gestured to his face, “is a profile meant for currency!” He was joking. Surely.

Something chimed within his breast and Sirius took out a pocket watch (a pretty watch** with a gold case) and said, “Right on the dot, shall we head out?”

“So Hogsmeade? It’s not even a Hogsmeade weekend though, how are we getting there?” Larka asked as they crossed the campus and out the front gate, until they came across an out-of-place, vicious looking motorbike parked in the middle of a patch of lawn.

“Hop on and you’ll see,” Sirius said enigmatically, passing her a helmet.

The metalwork of the motorbike was painted a furiously saturated deep maroon (Gryffindor, of course, it was like he could not bear the thought of anybody not knowing that he was a Gryffindor), but the seat was Champaign coloured leather and soft to the touch. Larka glided onto the back seat and looked at Sirius putting on his own helmet.

He had none—and Larka belatedly realized that the too-large helmet on her head was his. She started objecting, but Sirius ignored her and leapt on, waking the bike to a ferocious roar with a kick. He whipped the bike around and rode the terrain, towards Hogsmeade’s general direction by not following any road Larka knew—or in fact, any road at all, just tearing past the grassy land at the edge of the lake with great zeal.

Larka was scared for her life, clutching at Sirius’s waist so tightly that she couldn’t feel her arms. The wind running by her felt like hands grabbing at her and pulling her back. “Where are we going?” Larka yelled as it became apparent that they were not heading to Hogsmeade after all.

Oh Merlin, he half turned his head to say, “Ah, the basic points of the plot?”

“Eyes on the road!” she screamed.

“Relax,” he said, this time head firmly forward.

Larka allowed her heart to retreat from her throat. “If there is a plot, it would be good to know about it.”

“Stream of consciousness—no discernable plot.”

“I distinctively remember you saying something about dinner and a film?” Larka asked—but of course Sirius was not a ‘traditional’ sort of boy. Although technically, since it was a Muggle tradition, it would make him, scion to the great pureblood House of Black, highly unorthodox. Larka suspected he snuck into cinemas often.

“A blatant cover-up for our more clandestine activities, of course—the classic switcheroo!”

Larka was pretty sure it was called a ‘lie’, but she went along with it.

“Curious weather we’ve been experiencing lately,” Sirius yelled conversationally, “I’d say somewhat of an aberrant warm current from the Southwest.”

Larka looked at the sky, which was a typical Scottish grey. Late May was, indeed, getting warm, but it was neither directional nor aberrant. “I’m not an expert on wind currents,” she shouted loudly over the noise.

“Neither am I,” Sirius admitted with a feral grin before easing to a stop. “We’re here,” he announced.

‘Here’ was really not a place—it was just a stretch of flattish land on the other side of the lake, where the Forbidden Forest cleared off a bit more by the shoreline. The water was stormier than the wind warranted, and the only thing Larka could see were sheets of algae broken by white foam.

She looked around—and there, right on the shore, a large sheet was spread out with what appeared to be trays of plates under reflective dome-shaped covers. A large shape stood a few feet away from the rock, a large black cloth draped over the tall thing to hide whatever it was.

“My lady,” Sirius said with a bow, extending his curved arm out for her.

“Oh,” she made out. What was proper dinner etiquette again? She curtsied*** and took his arm.

Sirius clapped twice as they approached the rock, and a house elf deftly appeared of nowhere, took off the covers to all the platters with experienced ease, and retreated away with a bow.

“Good man, John,” Sirius said to the empty air.

“Is his name really John?” Larka marvelled.

“I wouldn’t know,” Sirius shrugged. “Up now,” he hadn’t meant it as a command but his natural assurance made it sound like one. Larka knew what he did and didn’t mean though, and gladly scaled the rock while holding onto his hand for balance. His palm was soft skinned and warm, but the knuckles were rough and scratchy. It made sense given his station and appetite for fistfights, but something about it made Larka’s stomach twitch in a funny way.

“I hope you like rumaki,” Sirius said, “although who doesn’t. And or veal; honestly I had no idea what your opinion would be on slaughtering baby cows. I also asked for collard greens although that really doesn’t go with the palette but you seemed to always enjoy it. And of course banana bread. And lava cake. And rosewater and plum blossom macaroons. And rum canelé. The highlight of this meal is really the desserts.”

Larka was slowly understanding why girls flocked to Sirius, and not all of it was because of his good looks. “Collard greens go nicely with fried chicken,” she said.

“Ah,” he scratched the back of his neck adorably, “Figured that out, eh?”

“It’s hard,” Larka said wryly, “not to.”

Sirius shrugged, but Larka couldn’t decipher his muttering as he strained to one side and brought up two bottles of wine from beneath the rock. “The 1989 Domaine Collet, Chablis Grand Cru Valmur,” he thrust both hands towards her, “or the 1992 Gallo of Sonoma, Dry Creek Valley Zinfandel?”

“Uh,” Larka said.

“Most marvellous choice,” Sirius said, setting aside the red, “Chablis for dinner and Zinfandel for later.” He rolled his sleeves up for eating and Larka saw the monogram of his initials, sewn upside down on the inside of his sleeve in white thread that matched the shirt perfectly, so that when rolled, the faint rise of SAB could be seen just at his elbow. Barely a quarter inch, the letters could hardly be noticed if she wasn’t paying such close attention to him. Larka couldn’t decide if it was tacky or witty tailoring****, but most of all she wanted to reach out and touch it, to feel his initials against the grain of her thumb.

The meal was, truth be told, a little cold, but that did not diminish its pleasure by one bit. The sun was almost gone from this side of the world, bringing with it the last, burning rays of the spring day. Larka tipped the wine glass to let the last drop of white wine trickle onto her tongue, not caring if she appeared unrefined. The wine was very delicious with the grilled, savoury fish, although she couldn’t quite taste ‘the fruit and light vanilla grown out of the clay limestone soil with fossilized oysters, playing complexities with the fattiness of the bass’ (what Sirius said), although she agreed it was citrusy. Maybe a third glass for her.

“Time for the other bottle!” Sirius exclaimed, tossing the white bottle into the distance and opening the red wine with enthusiasm.

Larka cringed when she heard the shattering, but was a new glass of wine was presented to her, dark liquid in the failing light.

“Ah,” Sirius looked, swirled, breathed, and sipped, swirling the wine in his mouth before repeating the steps, “beautiful notes of black currant, cassis, and toasted coconuts, like a good jam.”

Larka sipped as well. It also tasted nice, but that was the extent of her palette. Maybe a bit like liquorice candy?

“It’s time!” Sirius declared, hopped to his feet, and with a swing jumped off the rock smoothly, not losing any momentum as he ran to the hitherto cloaked tall object. He tugged the swathing cloth off to reveal a tall white film then a black reel and—oh! It was a Muggle film projector! How whimsical! She had never seen one before, but had of course seen pictures of it in Muggle Studies.

“I said dinner and a film, didn’t I?” Sirius said proudly.

“You also said that was a lie,” she reminded him.

“Not a lie, a switcheroo—you didn’t expect me changing the _location_ , not the activities!” he cackled at his own cleverness. “Allow me to present,” he made a great flourish with his arm, “the Muggle masterpiece of _The Purple Rose of Cairo_ *****!”

Larka wasn’t familiar with the film, but gladly raised her glass in cheers.

As the bright, jaunty music to the opening sequence started, Sirius came up beside her and cast an arm around her shoulder nonchalantly, the way he did everything. Larka hoped that he didn’t notice her stiffening within his hold. She didn’t mean to, honestly, but the more she told herself to behave normally, the less she knew what normal felt like.

“Isn’t Tom Baxter such a _cad_ ,” he whispered into her ear and Larka started to burn; heat blared from the ridges of her ears, and her body felt alien, hot and quivering. It was an extreme exercise in willpower for her to keep still and steadily breathing. On the screen, Tom Baxter just appeared in the pyramid, a lovable explorer breaking through the dreary, bored lives of his newfound mid-Atlantic friends. Larka tried to focus on what Tom was saying and not the newly developed string of nerves that extended from her overheated ears to every corner of her body.

When the actor Gil rivalled Tom in the effort to win Cecilia’s heart, Larka’s own heart was thunderous******, threatening to drown out all sound and burst forth from her chest cavity, not in anticipation of the film, which was lovely, but goodness gracious how was she supposed to attend to these fictitious characters when Sirius _had his arm around her_? Her shoulder was burning where his arm pressed against her, and his fingers might as well have been hot coals on her skin.

Occasionally (frequently), he would say something in sotto voce, enamoured with being the only two watching a film by the water (and his own voice, which he adored—who could blame him?—there was something about the rich, smooth texture that made even a comment on the weather immensely magnetic; surely he had to know it). Larka had trouble paying attention to the details of what Sirius said as well.

Just as Cecilia told Tom that she chose the ‘reality’ with Gil instead of the fantasy-film-land, Sirius shifted and said, “I think we’ve reached the socially approved stage of hand-holding, if you don’t object.”

Larka didn’t; she even lifted her own left hand to meet Sirius’s halfway, but her arm felt strangely detached, and everything around her carried a surreal quality. The colours were brighter, she thought birds were singing although there shouldn’t be any around, and the air seemed to sparkle despite a distinct lack of sunshine. She wasn’t sure if she was getting barmy or just was stuck in a beautiful dream (or if the macaroons were laced with something, which wouldn’t have surprised her because they were sinfully delicious). Whatever this moment was, she decided that she wanted to stay the second her hand touched Sirius’s. She didn’t have a chance to wipe her hand. She was sure her palm was a sweaty mess, but Sirius didn’t say anything. (His hands were long and warm, with the skin around his knuckles rising and falling in old scars, and the base of his fingers were a little rough and the callouses rubbed against her skin, but the centre of his palm was soft and all she wanted to do was curl her fingers around his hand, and maybe if her entire person could fit inside his palm then she could stay there forever and ever and always.)

She watched distantly as Tom returned to the film and Cecilia broke up with her husband. (Cecilia was married? Larka couldn’t recall.) Gil boards the plane leaving Cecilia behind, guiltily returning to his own life prior to this debacle. Sirius bent his head to whisper something again and Larka dared to look up. The stark light from the projector sculpted his face sharply. His eyes shone straight at her, not a speck of anything but the truest grey, the colour of her favourite wool jumper that was now too short and over washed, the sheepskin rug at the hearth in their old cottage, her father’s pipe smoke ascending in curls, the sky of Northumberland more often than not, old people hair like on the head of her grandparents and even the uniformly steely tresses of the Headmaster, the cobblestone paths in Hogsmeade that were always a pain to walk on. Oh everything in life was grey, like his eyes. Larka couldn’t help but hold her breath: she had always been aware of how handsome Sirius was, but there was something exceptionally devastating about him right now.

“Larka,” he said as he closed in. In an explosive moment, she realized that he might be coming in for a _kiss_. Larka wondered if she had any mints on her; clean teeth and fresh breath were of the severest magnitu—

 _Oh,_ there was _teeth_ and oh, a _tongue_ touched her lips and soon it was wet and slick and sounded like it should have been very gross but in fact was not at all. His teeth nibbled at her lower lip and because she was unsure as to what to do, her lips parted instinctively and his tongue flicked in. Then her entire mouth was warm and invaded and filled with Sirius and breathing became completely optional.

This was not Larka’s _first_ kiss, she would like for everybody to know. She had her first kiss with Frank Longbottom, actually, when she had stumbled upon a deadly game of spin-the-bottle back in Second Year. Both of them were so shy and hesitant that somebody had took it upon themself to shove their heads crashing together. Larka’s teeth hurt for a good while as she sat and shrivelled up in mortification. There was another boy—a Tony Quinn—in Fourth Year as well, but it was an awkward goodnight kiss because he felt it was expected at the end of a date. He had asked Novia Brooks out the day afterwards, though, so that was that. In any case, Larka could say with comfort that she was acceptably experienced in kissing, but she didn’t think the eating-one-another’s-face-off kind of kissing was enjoyable anyhow. It always seemed like so much work and slightly repellent. Those adjectives could not be further from her mind, though, as Sirius ate her face.

“Nose, Larka, you have a _nose_ ,” he breathed against her, voice a bit hoarser and deeper than usual.

Of _course_ she had a nose, Larka thought, irate at the short gap of contact.

His tongue did wonderful aerobics inside her mouth, and twirled and thrust. There was all this change and angles and _Magical Merlin_ no wonder people did this all the time. Larka began mimicking Sirius’s movements, and although their teeth brushed when she tried tilting her head, the low rumble that came out of Sirius’s chest was more than enough encouragement for her learning. She tried to curl her tongue along his teeth, the cavern of his mouth, sucked a little, and dear _goodness_ that was perfect, oh so _brilliant_.

When she started to see a speckled light, Sirius pulled back and she finally realized that her ribcage was also burning and her lungs were about to burst.

“ _Nose_ ,” he said again, sounding as lightheaded as she felt, “ _breathe_ through your _nose_.”

 _Oh_ , that made so much sense, she thought.

So they tried again, and this time her ribcage and lungs stayed obeisant.

Yes, they missed that poignant last scene of the film where the now loveless, homeless Cecilia slipped into another cinema to watch another romantic movie, wrecked and yet soon captivated by the romance on the screen. It was arguably the précis of the entire film and some would say one of the sharpest scenes in the genre. But bloody hell, who cared?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * Being just a little big boned for her height, Larka J. Roxburgh actually had very nice collarbones.
> 
> ** Sirius A. Black would have been utterly appalled to hear his hunting cased Breguet no.2567 being referred to as simply ‘a pretty watch’. Sporting a gold case and a revolutionary one minute tourbillon regulator, seven pivots jewels, and three-arm cut bimetallic compensation balance. It was a work of art, originally bought by his great-great-repeated greats-grandfather back in 1824 (for a mere two thousand francs). Sirius had found it in their family vault in Islington and took it upon himself to restore it to its proper place—the breast of his robe.
> 
> *** Larka J. Roxburgh should not have curtsied—she should have simply taken the proffered arm with great dignity (in a gloved hand, but she brought no gloves, and anyway the practice of gloves was in high controversy as of then, one side arguing it as archaic and the other side claiming it was tradition—so both sides really saying the exact same thing). However, please forgive her, as Larka had only ever practiced such etiquette in front of her tutor and never in an authentic setting.
> 
> **** It was less a tailoring choice on Sirius A. Black part, however, than that the family tailor stitched monograms on all of the Black shirts. The tradition went back to the illustrious Argo Canopus Black, an archdeacon who was rumoured to have fathered a dozen bastards but nevertheless was a pillar of society and beloved religious figure during the Victorian period. Argo, in the later period of his life, suffered from what the medical world now called cataract, but in his time it was just the aging of the mind. He had trouble identifying which gown he had worn on which day (having an awful habit of throwing down everything to the floor in a fit of brooding ire every evening, a habit that he never tried to curb), so his tailor monogrammed the days of the week into his inner sleeve, so that he and only he could tell (he did not want anyone else knowing the impact of his elder age). The tradition was thus created, followed by later fellow kin who wanted to replicate the impact on society Argo had until the day he bent over and died (his heart choking over a piece of pork belly).
> 
> ***** The Purple Rose of Cairo. Dir. Woody Allen. Prod. Robert Greenhut. By Woody Allen. Perf. Mia Farrow, Jeff Daniels, and Danny Aiello. Orion Pictures, 1985. Film.
> 
> Sirius A. Black had chosen The Purple Rose of Cairo for a variety of reasons, the least of which being it was a good film that bagged a Muggle BAFTA for best picture (he didn’t even know what a BAFTA was). It was also readily available in well-preserved, portable film reel, but again, not important. What was important was that it was a moralistic and/or satiric fable (depending on how one looked at the ending) hidden under the façade of a romantic comedy. And of course it was funny—whimsically, lyrically so, in the Woody Allen’s typical style, but less verbose and intellectual. In short, it was a story about a woman who watched a romance movie in which the romantic protagonist walked out of the film to woo her. The rest of the characters, the studio, and even the actor in real life were of course very angry, but the two lovebirds tried to ride into the sunset as best as they could (which wasn’t very well). The actor wooed the girl as well, and in the end the girl chose the real life actor over the out-of-the-movie protagonist, who glumly returned to the silver screen. A happy ending with a wonderful choice rooted in reality—until the actor revealed that he was faking being in love with the girl and left her. The girl, alone, went into another romance movie at the theatre. The end.  
> It was darling and not sad, but Sirius found it conveyed the perfect touch at dissecting what the distinction of fantasy and reality was. He hoped that Larka J. Roxburgh would resonate with him over how he, a lost bit of mush without his friends and public image, and her, submerging deliberately into anonymity, could overcome the boundaries of their own selves if they did not fall into the tragedy that Woody Allen had so helpfully pointed out for them.
> 
> Well, at least that was what Sirius would have thought if he had the introspective self-awareness of Remus J. Lupin. As he was, Sirius just thought it was the right choice for some guttural reason.
> 
> ****** It must be said that Sirius A. Black’s own heart was beating quicker than it ought to have, despite the number of times he had charmed girls. But Larka J. Roxburgh looked like she was about to faint, half with anticipation and half from anxiety, so Sirius thought he must remain steadfast for his princess.


	12. Time Said I Told You So

**Chapter 10**

**Time Said I Told You So**

Professor Slughorn had taken sick leave, again*. Given his absence, Professor Schneider had to indignantly but nevertheless obligingly combine Slughorn’s class with his own.

Which was how Larka found herself in Potions class with the Sixth Years. The large class size meant that Professor Schneider (who never was attentive to begin with) had little to no control over the class. While all the others were happily chuntering on under sparse adult supervision, Larka was silently trying to brew the draught. She was seated next to Severus Snape, a Sixth Year known for his snappishness and reticence. She had tried her best to work up some sort of small talk, but always got a brisk reply. She soon gave up, and just quietly wrapped up herself in the raucous classroom, stirring her spoon in a pot of indeterminate coloured liquid and turning pages of her textbook.

She focused on stirring clockwise, then counter clockwise, then clockwise, then—oh bugger, she gave up and resorted to staring at the illustration in the book.

“You’re Black’s thing, aren’t you,” the boy beside her said suddenly.

Larka blinked, looked at Severus, who was bent over a roll of parchment that already had at least three feet of tiny letters. She first thought that she must have hallucinated him speaking, and then thought that his mother would not have approved of how close his nose was to the paper. Perhaps she ought to remind him?

Still unsure of whether or not he was actually speaking, she timidly asked, “Pardon, did you say something to me?”

His lips turned into a lopsided sneer, “Unless I was talking to your utter failure of a simple Draught of Evocation.”

Larka blinked again, dazed by his rudeness, but Larka faithfully remembered: return rudeness with politeness, as Dad always said. So she answered his previous question pleasantly, “Well, yes, I suppose that you could say that, if you are inclined to say such things.”

Severus seemed taken aback and remained silent.

Larka was disappointed by his lack of response and had dropped back to intently stirring the liquid (which was thickening at an alarming rate), when she was surprised again by his deriding voice, “Do you know his secrets then?”

It was her turn to be taken back. “Sirius? Why of course not. I’d say that would rather defeat the purpose of ‘secret’.”

“So you don’t know anything about that twat.”

Larka was more repelled by his insult to Sirius than to herself, but then again Severus never did get along with any of the Marauders.

“More than you do,” she said not as politely, turning to Severus to meet his dark eyes, partly concealed behind greasy hair.

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” he sneered.

“Wouldn’t you,” she replied vaguely.

“No, and if you want to know more, say, like why he’s no longer friends with Potter, well, I suggest you meet me down nearby the Whomping Willow tonight.”

“What makes you think I’d go?”

Severus shrugged, “Because you’re a fool.”

Well when he put it so convincingly like that. “I can’t, it’s astronomy night for us.” And then she proceeded to ignore him, although that was bad manners, but people so hostile towards Sirius did not deserve the best of manners.

But Larka did not go to the astronomy tower that night. Not that she was silly enough to actually do what Severus said—even she could tell he would not actively do Sirius any good—but it was that during dinner with Novia and Kelso, they pressed her into other activities.

“How is Sirius?” Novia had asked quite bluntly.

“Oh you know…” Larka trailed off. Sirius wouldn’t want other people to know how miserable he is, but she couldn’t just lie to Novia either.

Novia stared at her. “Why aren’t you with him tonight?”

“He’s busy,” Larka took some clam linguini. Being in a relationship did not mean being joined at the hip, and Sirius really did say he was busy tonight. It must be a big deal, for he had been antsy for two days now.

Fortunately, Novia let the matter go after staring at Larka for a bit. Instead, she said, “There’s big party tonight, do you want to go?”

“Um—”

Before Larka could say no, Novia pressed, “It’ll be fun. We haven’t done anything together in ages.”

“It’s not one of those fanatical ones,” Kelso added, “it’s just in Juan’s room.”

“I heard from Estelle that Florian will be there, so who knows, maybe your boyfriend will show up as well.”

“Just skip astronomy for a night, for us?” Kelso continued.

“Well,” Larka hesitated. She had been looking forward to doing a bit of stargazing, and there were a few proves that she needed to write for next week. The reason why she was good at her classes was not her intelligence, which was average, but her single-minded obsessive nature. The idea of not doing the proves made her uncomfortable. On the other hand… “Okay, but just for a little bit?”

“Of course!” Novia said gleefully. Even Kelso looked happy, and Larka was glad of her choice.

Until nine o’clock that night. The party was terrible. It was a terrible decision to come here. It wasn’t a first year party so she didn’t know anybody except Novia and Kelso. Novia was playing a cards game with copious amount of drinking involved. Kelso was sitting in a circle with a girl with a soft, harmless face, a petite boy with painstakingly coiffed hair, whom Novia earlier had pointed out as Juan Alvarez the host. Arlene Day was giggling with her friends in the other corner, passing a bottle of something Larka couldn’t make out.

Larka stood to the side of the room trying to blend into the curtains as much as possible, holding a lager she took based on someone saying it had omelette aromas.

This had been an awful idea. She could already feel a headache beginning to pound in her temples. The night outside was so much more peaceful: star spangled sky, the tops of the forest glistening with moonlight, a small bird fluttering past in a blur. Larka could almost hear the soft hum of the night, the leaves singing in the slight stir of the gracious breeze, the nocturnal insects waking up with buzzing. A cloud passed over and obscured the view, and Larka hurriedly opened a sliver of the window. She thought, in between the clouds, she could see the outline of Sirius motorbike by the edge of the forest. Something funny happened to her chest cavity, a sudden constriction like some ghostly hand went through her body and squeezed her insides. She wondered what Sirius was doing.

Nobody tried to approach her or engage her in conversation, because that was what happened normally and Sirius was an anomaly. At ten, Larka went over to bid Novia goodbye, but Novia was busy laughing at Estelle and James Cary’s banter. She then went to Kelso, who sullenly nodded but kept her eyes on Rosa King, who was saying something about Arlene.

Larka slipped out quietly and began a slow walk back to Gryffindor. She was strangely discontent. The sound of young voices slithered through the corridors and enveloped her, but Larka had the acute sensation of being alone. She supposed this was what missing one’s boyfriend felt like**.

She did not notice the steps behind her, approaching quickly and with purpose.

And suddenly, darkness.

When Larka came to, she was stiff as a stone and unable to move even a finger. _Petrificus Totalus_ apparently, simple and effective. Although she couldn’t move, she was being moved. She couldn’t bend her head, but somebody was dragging her by her feet, lugging her down the hall like a log of timbre. She could only see the back of the person’s head. Long dark hair in slight waves, a little wet, maybe from a shower?

Oh no, it wasn’t wet, it was _grease_.

Severus Snape? What was going on? Severus and she had no grudges between them, and Larka couldn’t imagine Severus trying to hurt her simply because of her association with Sirius.

He didn’t hurt her, not exactly, except Larka expected that when the curse wore off she would be in much pain. Severus was really quite nimble, even with her as a dead weight. He made remarkable progress in short period, and before Larka could wrap her mind around being unable to control her body, they were out on Hogwarts grounds.

She wondered what Severus meant to do, leave her there until morning?

Severus continued to drag her, at a slower speed now that the ground was less cooperative than the smooth stone of Hogwarts, but steadily they went across the grounds, until Larka could make out something moving in the distance. It was the Whomping Willow.

He couldn’t want to throw her at the Willow, could he, Larka thought, horrified.

With the moon’s bright and full light, she could see the Willow now, long droopy branches waving as they came closer.

Severus set to her down at a safe distance to the tree and wordlessly adjusted her so that she stared straight at the tree’s trunk.

Before he could find something large enough to properly prop her up though, Larka heard the familiar voice of Sirius yell out a counter curse.

It took her a second to realize that she had regained movement, but in the meantime Severus threw an _Incarcerous_ curse at Sirius. Ropes immediately shot at Sirius like thick, angry pythons, snaking around him tightly.

Larka crumbled to the ground, the aftereffects of the curse making her muscles ache. Sirius shot some blue curse at Severus before he was fully immobilized by the twisting ropes, binding him tighter the more he struggled, and soon Sirius could barely move his chest to breathe, but was still yelling nonsense at Severus about the moon.

Severus stood snarling, “Shut up Black. I’ll show Roxburgh and _you_ can feel what it’s like to have people _leave_ you.”

“You _swore_ ,” Sirius screamed, except it wasn’t so much a scream because he couldn’t get air, “Dumble—”

“I’m simply _letting_ her discover the truth—whatever,” Severus cut himself off, “I don’t have to explain myself to you.” Severus stumbled, his torso still flashing blue, but turned around with some difficulty.

Larka watched in horror as she met Severus’s squinted eyes in a glare with a hatred so profound that Larka shivered.

“Run!” Sirius yelled at her from behind Severus, “ _Run_!”

Larka felt her vision waver and her hands tremble, her blood rushing with great thumps up and down her body, everywhere except her brain, where it was so sorely needed. She tried to calm herself and also take out her wand, but her hands fumbled out of a lack of practice of weaponizing herself. She wasn’t even that good at spells inside the classroom, preferring theory to practice.

Seeing that Larka was not moving, Sirius got even more frantic, “Run, you idiot woman, _run_! You can’t fight him! _Run_!”

Severus straightened, and Larka cowered instinctively. But, she looked at Sirius, paler than usual either because of the moonlight or constriction to his blood flow—she couldn’t very well leave him, could she?

She straightened as well, and slowly but steadily circled around Severus to stay in front of Sirius.

“What are you _doing_ ,” Sirius snapped behind her.

Larka watched Severus raise his wand arm. She felt strangely detached; she seemed to have come out of her body and looked on at Severus mouth shaping into a curse as a third party. She had never been so close to actual danger before, but she couldn’t shake the surreal passivity in her. Well, she thought rather calmly, here it came, nothing to be done _._ Still she stood her ground, an arm in front of Sirius as if her measly arm was an impenetrable shield.

It was hardly a lethal spell, but it did cut her shoulder like a thousand wasps. As pain exploded, the world turned dark for Larka. She could almost see the ripples of pain shooting up from her shoulder to tell her brain that she was hurt. She could faintly feel blood trickling down her right arm, and she assumed that there was some sort of wound there. Her head was spinning, and she was a little nauseated.

Sirius roared like a berserk animal behind her, “ _Libertas perfundet_! _Libertas perfundet_!”

“Wha—what?” she could still talk, albeit hoarsely and barely audible.

“Say it, it’s a spell, just say it!”

“ _Shut_ it, Black!” Severus bellowed over Sirius’s voice.

Oh, Larka realized, Sirius was teaching her a spell. Now this was the part that she was good at: classroom stuff. “ _Libertas perfundet_ ,” she repeated a few times, aiming her wand somewhere between Sirius and Severus, since she didn’t know what the spell was.

Except she did, didn’t she? Liberty pours, or liberty floods—it’s a spell of liberation. “ _Libertas perfundet_ ,” she said again, this time the tip of her wand touching the ropes binding Sirius. A bobbly light appeared at the tip. The ropes did not fall away, but it loosened, and Sirius violently sucked in a large breath like a drowning person suddenly surfacing the water.

Larka was rather proud of how quickly she had learnt the spell, but pride was not an apropos feeling right now.

Pride was indeed the downfall of mankind, Larka lamented as Severus petrified her once more, this time not with the simple full body bind curse, but another one that Larka didn’t know.

Sirius audibly said ‘Fuck’ as she dropped to the ground to fold into a ball.

Severus came closer and kicked her with his foot—no, he wasn’t kicking, he was moving her.

Once again, he made sure her eyes were focused on the Willow, and with a satisfied smirk, he left.

Larka wanted to ask Sirius if he was already, but she couldn’t.

“Larka?” Sirius asked. “Larka, are you alright?”

A pause.

“Oh I guess you can’t answer me.”

Another longer pause.

“Listen, Larka, just go to sleep.”

Larka wanted to snort or roll her eyes; the inability to do so made her hurt internally.

“Go to sleep, or at least close your eyes. Don’t look at the Willow. Whatever you hear, just don’t look at anything. The curses will wear off with daylight. I’ll get you and counter your curse and we can go back to the castle and you can take a nap and then a long, hot bath. And I’ll kill Snape. But you’ll take a long, hot bath, with verbena soap and I’ll bring you that shampoo you like smelling so much, the one with saffron and ylang-ylang, and you can make bubbles, and the heat of the water will embrace you and you will feel lightened and warm and comfortable—can you imagine that? There will be a candle in the room, and the entire loo will smell like Bulgarian rose and blackcurrant leaves, and you will feel so relaxed, so happy, so calm…”

He must have said more, but Larka did indeed drift asleep, much to her chagrin. She wanted to stay awake, to keep Sirius company even if she couldn’t help him. But his words lulled and she was so tired and battered, and the rich, soothing sound of his voice…

Something woke Larka up. At first she thought it was the daylight, but then she realized that it was barely daybreak yet. She looked around confusedly but found that her neck wasn’t moving—still full rigor, and now she remembered where she was. Sirius was silent; he must have fallen asleep or unconscious sometime during the night as well. Larka wished she could turn around and check on him.

Something was very strange though, she felt, but couldn’t say why. It took her longer than it should have, but she realized that the world was completely still, including the Willow.

And then Peter.

Larka blinked, thinking she must have a concussion or be still dreaming.

But no, it was indeed Peter, appearing out of thin air. He was kneeling down by the base of the now docile Willow, turned away.

And another person started to appear, and Larka realized that there was a door of sorts just there. Peter was still kneeling, but a third person helped the second up—it was James holding up Remus, Larka finally recognized. It took some effort because James looked frazzled, with errant hair and spectacles almost falling off, the glass in front of his left eye shattered, which made him look like he had on a monocle. Remus was in complete tatters, his clothes flowing off his body in stripes of ragged cloth, and a blanket over his shoulders to protect him from the air. Once they were both up, James took up his wand and levitated Remus into the air.

Remus whimpered. It was a low sound, one that Larka should not have heard but she did.

James began to walk with the floating Remus towards the castle when he stopped in his tracks.

His eyes met Larka’s, then flickered to behind her, no doubt taking in the sight of Sirius.

James took a step closer, frowned in uncertainty, but very quickly he seemed to have reached some decision, because his face relaxed and fell into a stony blank. He waved his wand and Remus floated further away from him. Larka didn’t think Remus was very conscious now.

James called out to Peter and they walked past Larka and Sirius, not bothering to undo their curses. As James passed by Larka, he stooped and hissed to her, “ _Not a word_ , you hear?”

James looked ferocious and alien to Larka, who had never seen the golden boy of Gryffindor in such a state. She blinked in quick succession, as if she could convey her promise of staying quiet via blinks. James glowered at her for an extended period of time, before he rose up and walked away.

Larka’s heart sank. She might have not known what was going on before, but James’s reaction just made it impossible for her to lie to herself. She looked at the faded outline of a round orb in the sky and then looked at Remus, blood plastering the rags of his clothes to his skin in a sticky mess.

Just as James was about to walk out of earshot, he turned back and said, “I’m sorry.”

There was nothing that James should apologize for, Larka thought, because this fucked up world was not his fault.

-.-.-.-.-

Larka didn’t see Remus, James, Peter, Severus, or even Sirius the next day.

For breakfast, Larka sat with Novia, Kelso, and some of the people Novia had made friends with recently. Larka nodded through their banal chatter about Natalia’s new hairstyle and ‘that bitch’ who stole Estelle’s date to Slughorn’s party. Lunch was the same ordeal. She endured the lessons in such a state of hazy agitation. For dinner, she declared that she wasn’t hungry—and she wasn’t—and retreated to her room instead.

She did not seek Sirius out. Not knowing quite what to do, it was easy to drift into the routine of classes and sleep, ignoring even the weekend Hogsmeade trip.

Dinner of the next week, she finally found Sirius—the four Marauders were sitting together again, although nobody spoke, obviously still at a cold war.

Larka was not a clever individual, but even she could piece together the tale of betrayal, vengeance, and werewolves. Sirius was exiled for revealing to Severus Snape Remus’s secret; Severus in turn took revenge on Sirius by getting her in on the secret truth.

Larka pondered whether she should pretend to not see them. No, it was no use, they knew that she knew, and the knowledge itself was both a mistake and a burden.

Remus was sitting completely still, and it clearly took James’s forceful hand to guide him to eat anything. James’s face was bunched up in frustration and fury. Peter was for once trying to look away from the group. Sirius, but oh, Sirius was sitting across the table, and his head was bent over so much that his forehead could have touched the table top.

Larka felt a small quiver of fear as she walked closer to them, to Remus. She was a traditional sort of witch, brought up by traditional pureblood parents, and if they distilled in her all the old prejudices and fears, then it was not to be wondered at. Still, Larka could hardly reconcile the image of the snarling, berserk wolf that she remembered from picture books***, to the sight of Remus, looking very, very tired and very, very small. Perhaps he was a very special kind of werewolf, Larka thought, more like a were-husky-dog than a were _wolf_. Then she remembered what she saw the night before, and knew that Remus was exactly the sort of werewolf that her parents had frightened her with when she misbehaved.

_Larka Janet Roxburgh, stop picking at your beans, or the big bad werewolf will get you! Larka Janet Roxburgh, go out in the sun or the werewolf will eat you in the corner! Larka Janet Roxburgh, one more slice of banana bread and you’ll be plump for the werewolf’s picking!_

It was always the werewolf. In her youth, it had summed up every single fear she ever had. (So please do not judge her for the tremor in her legs and the reluctance in her approach.)

But she was grown up, or at least grown enough to be able to face this, Larka thought. Besides, who could find it in their hearts to fear Remus Lupin? He was such the gentlest soul. A few storybook illustrations and generational reprimands were _not_ going to change anything, Larka determinedly told herself. The first breaths were hard, but she soon got used to breathing in his vicinity. The first few steps were hard too, but none came close to her reaching out her trembling fingers and putting it soothingly on Remus’s shoulder.

He jerked forward, as if her touch burned.

Larka didn’t understand his reaction until a second later, she did. She wanted to cry. Larka pushed forward to lay her hand on his arm again. (She was touching the big, bad _werewolf_ now, Mum, and he was _perfectly fine_.)

“Remus,” she spoke, her voice much steadier than she felt, “you will be taking the N.E.W.T.s soon, right?” It was going to be at the end of next year, but that wasn’t what this was about. “Might I study for mine along with you?”

He stayed stilled like cold marble and gave no signal that he had even heard her.

“You know, our library sessions—I kind of miss them in truth.” The more she spoke to him, the more he looked like a normal teenage boy and less like a ferocious monster ready to condemn her to hell. _There you go_ , she told herself, _nothing to it but a will to power_.

Remus lifted his head of sandy hair, to reveal a face cheerless and perplexed, “You… want me to study with me?”

“Yes,” Larka said firmly.

“You want to be in a room with me?”

“Yes.”

“You—”

“I don’t think of you differently, Remus, let’s just stop the tiptoeing. Well, I mean, I suppose I do, I must, you are, but not like a different person. Like if you suddenly got a new haircut. Or turned in a girl. Of course that would be a lot of other things, but you’d still be you, and you know, Orlando was fine—not that, of course, fiction,” she took a deep breath. “Let’s just study. Books are so much better than me trying to say anything.”

The corner of his lips turned upwards ever so slightly, and his shoulders rolled back. He shot her a smile—she thought it must have been grateful, or relieved, but truth was she couldn’t decipher Remus very well even when he wasn’t being very enigmatic.

The other hand, limp at her side—not the _touching werewolf_ hand—was found by Sirius, who held it and squeezed it gently. If Larka did not see their limbs joint together though, she would have thought she was imagining it, because Sirius was visibly still and marble-like.

 _Oh poor Sirius_ , she thought _._ Somewhere in the logical part of her, she knew she ought to be thinking ‘Oh poor Remus’. She squeezed his hand back reassuringly—certainly with more assurance than she felt herself, at the moment. He was usually so warm, but now his hand felt like a slap of an ice block against her skin. It took a few more moments of hovering over the table before she could awaken her muscles enough to actually sit down.

James made an effort to smile at her, but the effect was lost. Larka tried to smile back, but she couldn’t, and James had looked away anyhow.

Peter was actually the most hearteningly calm person amid them all. He soldiered on, breathing in and out regularly, and that was enough support. Larka both admired his calmness and envied it. She always knew that Peter was a staunch sort of person in a crisis.

So two hours trickled by in this stupor of silence and awkwardness. Two hours of people coming and going, before the tables were all empty, and the elves had begun to clean up. Two hours before Larka decided that this was _silly_.

“I suggest,” she began, her voice trembling less than she thought it might, “we get on with our lives.” She tried to rise, but Sirius’s hand held down like an anchor in the bay. She tried to plead with Peter, but he just looked away nervously. She tried to look at James, but he glared at Sirius when his eyes were not on the table.

Larka sighed. She supposed that this would take even longer. But Sirius repented so deeply and profoundly—surely that had to mean something in terms of redemption?

-.-.-.-.-

It turned out that the road to redemption was a very long and very silent one.

Days passed, and they had made a sort of truce, where all of them did not mention the happening. There was still a cold war going on, but at the very least they sat without a suffocating cloud of guilt. No, they just sat in general silence.

(He was still a persona non grata, but Sirius kept trying to be a house-elf to Remus, as if clean sheets**** and a cornucopia of chocolate rhinos***** could somehow redeem him. Until Remus broke the wall of silence for about five minutes to yell at Sirius, and Sirius could not stop grinning for a good hour. He spent the majority of his time with her, leering longingly and jealously at the rest of his mates, and she would crack open a book and let him leer. Sometimes, he showed her how to do Transfiguration homework, and she would habitually put her hand on his thigh, and her touch was soft and solid and a little cold, because her hands were always cold. The coldness, even through the fabric of his robe, was like a soft lick on his insides, and he got the feeling that she was _letting_ him help her, not because she needed it, but because he did. It was different from the way he expressed himself: his performances were to ostentatiously give her flowers from the side of the Quidditch pitch, or bring her coffee cake form the kitchen raid, or charm a crane to sit on her shoulder in class. But he had never gotten a stronger sense of being taken care of before, something that he didn’t know could happen to him until he was eleven******. That sensation allowed him to go back to replacing the molten, uneaten chocolates by Remus’s nightstand with newly bought ones.)

More days passed, making a month out of the war. Some healing occurred.

(They were talking again, tentatively, about the weather, about the coming end of term exams, about Lily, and sometimes about Larka. Sirius once took Larka up to their room, far too early in this healing process, because the five of them sat there with tea and spiked tea, and the attempts to laugh came out strained, but Sirius would take strained.)

Eventually, as with all things, this too passed. The process was painful, and there was no real logic behind it. It was a bizarre thing to begin with, and we must not try to describe it at all. Let the Marauders keep this as a secret chapter in their gleaming school-year-storybook.

(The first time Remus smiled at Sirius was a remarkable day. So was the day that Remus first joked with him, first socked him so hard in the arm that he got bruises, first faced Severus’s eyes without withering. Larka was happy for Sirius on those days, and Sirius was happy that Larka was happy for him.)

Redemption came that languid day when Remus looked over to the adjacent hospital bed and saw Sirius lying in tatters on the patient bed; everything was white, white skin on white sheets, white clay against white bandages, whiteness pooling onto whiteness. Larka was sitting by his side, twisting her hands and her sleeve in turns.

That was almost the end of the school year, but better late than never.

-.-.-.-.-

Poppy Pomfrey was not even shocked to see Black in this state, or not as much as she would have liked to be. In fact, she would have liked to be sterner, but it was hard, for the boy had a way of charming into everybody’s hearts. She was also rather used to him being beaten up, although it was never quite as bad as this.

“What happened this time?” she asked tiredly to nobody in particular. Lupin alone commanded enough attention and tender sympathy without Black adding to the heap of brokenness. She was too young for this.

“I was just rather poorly positioned by the stairs,” Sirius lied through his teeth, grimacing but forcing out what he thought was a good smile.

Poppy wasn’t satisfied, “Falling down the _stairs_ , really?” She expected more creativity at the very least.

“Indeed, the general sort of hustle one always has with stairs” Sirius made to shake his head but stopped because it _hurt_ , “Very insulting sometimes, their right angles.”

“And what were you doing by the stairs?” Poppy asked warily.

“James did a superb reflecting spell, ma’am, just rather poorly aimed due to his unfortunate sight.”

She could feel the dull ache in her temples already. “And what Sixth Year has business doing a spell as complicated as this?”

“Well ma’am,” Sirius replied meekly, “we like to be prepared, if you know what I mean, for when we go out into the world. You never know what you might need.”

Poppy knew exactly what he meant. These were dark times that the students faced, but it was not a time to discuss such things. From the looks of the Roxburgh girl (who, thank Merlin, was not teary, but had a strangely maternal sadness to her), at least Black had done good in shielding her from most of the rumours out there.

She exited the room feeling ten years older than when she had entered it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * Horace Slughorn often proclaimed a sudden sickness and took an extra day to visit his wife (a figure whose very existence was unknown to most of the magical community, but the story was not about Horace and his clandestine romances.
> 
> ** It was not until much later in life did Larka. J. Roxburgh recognize that sensation to be a sorrow tender to the point of being sweet. She wished she could tell her younger self to enjoy it before she truly knew what missing somebody meant.
> 
> *** The storybook that Larka J. Roxburgh’s parents read her in her childhood was the famed The Werewolf of Baskervilles. It featured a haunting image of a werewolf, and had a sensational pop-up illustration with the red gleaming eyes and the foaming saliva running down its snarling snout. It was a parents’ favorite, since it provided them with a tangible threat for their children. In contrast, Larka found the DADA textbook illustrations to be rather tame and boring.
> 
> **** Sirius A. Black did not iron Remus J. Lupin’s sheets himself: he bribed one of the elves to perform the daily task. Sirius had wanted to do it himself; in fact, he even tried on the first day, but within ten minutes Remus’s sheet had two holes, a blackened scorch mark, and the same amount of wrinkles. (Cotton was just so fastidious, Sirius said his defence.) In replacement he offered a set of his own (pale stone blue silk with fleur-de-lis in twisting silver threads, the least garish of his spares). Since then, Sirius entrusted the task of helping to the help.
> 
> ***** Specialty chocolates from The Chocolate Soldier in Aberdeen: assorted flavours (assorted dark, milk, salted almonds, rum raisin, peanut butter, hazelnut crunch, pistachio, espresso, whisky), £59.99 per bag. The boutique specialized in hard-to-find artisanal desserts, a one stop shop for all of Sirius A. Black’s confectionary needs, since it also sold the green tea chocolate bars that Larka J. Roxburgh liked (a mere £9.59 per bar—his girlfriend was so easy to please, Sirius thought proudly).
> 
> ****** Motherhood was supposed to mean protection and love, nurture and care; but instead what Mother meant to Sirius A. Black was just Bloody Marys for breakfast, Valium to shut the crying baby, and a discrete torture chamber for the husband’s various indiscretions. Mother, Mother, Mother. Sirius had read a line somewhere, an abused little boy who said he loved his mother almost as much as he hated her. Sirius didn’t feel like he loved Mother at all, not even a small speck, and he wondered if there was something wrong with him.
> 
> But, he looked at Larka, deeply concentrated in her book, whose hand on his thigh was cold and small and light and yet rooted him to the ground—he supposed at the very least there must be things right with him as well.


End file.
